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Student difficulties in connecting graphs and physics: Examples from kinematics
Abstract
Some common errors exhibited by students in interpreting graphs in physics are illustrated by examples from kinematics. These are taken from the results of a descriptive study extending over a period of several years and involving several hundred university students who were enrolled in a laboratory-based preparatory physics course. Subsequent testing indicated that the graphing errors made by this group of students are not idiosyncratic, but are found in different populations and across different levels of sophistication. This paper examines two categories of difficulty identified in the investigation: difficulty in connecting graphs to physical concepts and difficulty in connecting graphs to the real world. Specific difficulties in each category are discussed in terms of student performance on written problems and laboratory experiments. A few of the instructional strategies that have been designed to address some of these difficulties are described.
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Citations
Cited by
Functions, Graphs, and Graphing: Tasks, Learning, and Teaching
Leinhardt, G., Zaslavsky, O., & Stein, M. K. (1990) · Review of Educational Research · doi:10.3102/00346543060001001 · Cited by 1,103
Singer, S., & Smith, K. A. (2013) · Journal of Engineering Education · doi:10.1002/jee.20030 · Cited by 835
Synthesis of discipline-based education research in physics
Docktor, J. L., & Mestre, J. P. (2014) · Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research · doi:10.1103/physrevstper.10.020119 · Cited by 549
Review of Graph Comprehension Research: Implications for Instruction
Shah, P., & Hoeffner, J. (2002) · Educational Psychology Review · doi:10.1023/a:1013180410169 · Cited by 431
Spatial Visualization in Physics Problem Solving
Kozhevnikov, M., Motes, M. A., & Hegarty, M. (2007) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1080/15326900701399897 · Cited by 400
Metadata
- Authors
- McDermott, L. C., Rosenquist, M. L., & van Zee, E. H.
- Venue
- American Journal of Physics
- Published
- 1987-06-01
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 503-513
- ISSN
- 0002-9505 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-2909
- OpenAlex
- W2026701456
- Cited by
- 581
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 13.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- McDermott, L. C., Rosenquist, M. L., & van Zee, E. H. (1987). Student difficulties in connecting graphs and physics: Examples from kinematics. American Journal of Physics. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.15104
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
