A study of conceptualised links in the understanding of introductory Newtonian dynamics
Research into student understanding of university level physics has been extremely extensive over the past decade with many international studies affirming the inherent complexity and difficulty that undergraduate students typically experience in learning physics. An important and informative element of this research has focused attention on describing the variation in ways which students make sense of concepts which they experienced as being fundamentally counter-intuitive. One of the areas of most prolific research has been Newtonian dynamics. However, one important aspect from the teaching perspective which has not been examined at all is the variety of the ways in which multi-conceptual links are understood. This study has begun the examination of this aspect of Newtonian physics understanding using a group of first-year physics students enrolled at a typically good South African university. Since the study was primarily aimed at characterising the variance in understanding of conceptual links in Newtonian dynamics the fundamental theoretical framework chosen for the study was drawn from phenomenography. The data consisted of a set of concept maps created by the students involved in the study and in-depth interviews with these students about the understanding they were attempting to represent on a multi-conceptual level on these maps. Since an integral part of the study included exploring the role of counter- intuitiveness, the method involved creating ideal data-generating contexts for thematising drawn from an everyday problem with varying degrees of abstraction. In brief, these thematised scenarios incorporated the following: a familiar everyday experience with normal friction conditions; a familiar everyday experience with reduced friction conditions; and, an unfamiliar everyday experience with greatly reduced friction conditions. The set of interviews formed what is known as a 'pool of meaning' in phenomenography for its associated analytic process. The analysis had two components. The first component involved analysing the interview data across individuals to develop what is known phenomenographically as 'categories of description' to characterise the nature of the understanding in terms of conceptualisation or experience. The second component focused on learning as a function of the students' everyday and educational experiences. Here critical educational aspects emerged and their variance was identified. For example, intuition and context emerged as deeply influential factors in the ways Newtonian links are understood. Following contemporary thrusts in phenomenography this component of the analysis also looked at intra-contextual and inter-contextual shifts. The analysis produced four distinct qualitative ways of understanding or conceptualising Newtonian links and showed the critical influence of intuition and context in the development of understanding of Newtonian dynamics at the introductory level. The analysis also contributed to phenomenographic theoretical concerns about a way of experiencing or understanding a phenomenon and the evolvement of such understanding. Collectively, these results are used to suggest important pedagogical implications for informing the improvement of physics teaching at this level.
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Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics