Conceptual Analysis and Student Learning in Physics

The purpose of this project is to develop and test an easy-to-implement intervention for physics instruction that helps students to perform conceptual analyses and prepares them for future learning in the domain. Unfortunately, a gulf separates how physicists and students approach problem solving, as well as how they view the organizational structure of the physics content itself. To physicists, the beauty of physics lies in its hierarchical nature—a few general principles can be applied across a wide variety of contexts.  Students tend to learn the problem solving in terms of the equations, thus limiting their conceptual understanding, retention, and ability to advance to more complex materials.  The improvement of this situation will help physics instruction and may also be useful for other STEM disciplines.

The particular goals are to refine and evaluate an intervention to promote conceptual analysis, to evaluate a strategy to prepare students for future learning, to develop and evaluate set of dependent measures for assessing the fine structure of what has been learned, and to promote and evaluate long-term retention.  We present a means of conceptual analysis that can be incorporated into classroom settings without much modification of the curriculum, which places problem solving within the context of the principles being applied.  We adapt a recent perspective on preparing students for future learning to a much broader and more complex domain than used previously.  The dependent measures allow an examination of how each manipulation may affect the problem solving and conceptual understanding, including transfer to real-world situations.  Finally, we evaluate the long-term retention three months later.

This project will lead to both a better understanding of how physics instruction influences conceptual understanding and problem solving, as well as a means of improving conceptual analysis in the physics classroom.