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Testing student interpretation of kinematics graphs
Abstract
Recent work has uncovered a consistent set of student difficulties with graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration versus time. These include misinterpreting graphs as pictures, slope/height confusion, problems finding the slopes of lines not passing through the origin, and the inability to interpret the meaning of the area under various graph curves. For this particular study, data from 895 students at the high school and college level was collected and analyzed. The test used to collect the data is included at the end of the article and should prove useful for other researchers studying kinematics learning as well as instructors teaching the material. The process of developing and analyzing the test is fully documented and is suggested as a model for similar assessment projects.
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Citations
Cited by
Hake, R. R. (1998) · American Journal of Physics · doi:10.1119/1.18809 · Cited by 6,072
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
A Review and Comparison of Diagnostic Instruments to Identify Students’ Misconceptions in Science
Kaltakci Gurel, D., Eryilmaz, A., & McDermott, L. C. (2015) · EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education · doi:10.12973/eurasia.2015.1369a · Cited by 432
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
- Beichner, R. J.
- Venue
- American Journal of Physics
- Published
- 1994-08-01
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 750-762
- ISSN
- 0002-9505 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-2909
- OpenAlex
- W2089600355
- Cited by
- 624
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 18.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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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.
