Research On The Students' Understanding Of Some Physics Concepts In Middle School And University

One of the important factors that influence the physics study is the knowledge which the students have already had before they accepted formal education. Over the last twenty years, the research on students' understanding of physics concepts is a major topic of international physics education. Up to now, researches have proved that students come to introductory physics course with their own comprehension about physics phenomena through their own observation, experience and consideration. The students' beliefs, which are incompatible with most scientific theory, are labeled as "preconception" or "alternative conception", which constitute obstacles to subsequent learning.The present research is carried out in combination with disciplinary education under the guidance of relative theory of pedagogical psychology in one specif c domain. Our propose is to diagnose the students' difficulty in some basic physics concepts by clinical interview and diagnosis test. We try to induce and analyze the situations of students' conceptual understanding at different ages, to analyze why the misconceptions came into being, to give some discussion and suggestions to the teaching of the physics concepts so as to offer some basic work for the reform of the physics instruction. Firstly, some theories of pedagogical psychology related to the learning of physics concepts are to be analyzed, and some terms related to conceptual comprehension defined. We believe that the criterion for the understanding of concepts is that students can relate the concepts with the real world. On the basis of a lot of related literatures at home and abroad, we obtain an all-round acquaintance about the content and methodology concerning the research of students' conceptual understanding in physics and an overview of the research on the conceptualunderstanding is given in the thesis. In the past year, we have investigated almost eight hundreds students in middle schools and universities in Guangxi in order to make sense of students' understanding of some physics concept. The major methods are diagnosis text and individual interview in research. The content of the investigation concerns basic concepts in mechanics, DC circuit and mechanical waves. Thus we gain a great deal of first-hand material and get to know various demonstrations of students' understanding of concepts before and after the students learn physical knowledge, and we find that students have difficulty in understanding some physics concepts. The research shows that students misunderstand the relation between force and motion. gravity and action/reaction; that in DC circuit, students of different age groups have the belief of "consumption of current", "clashing currents" and "the battery as a constant current generator"; that in understanding the concepts of electricity students lack the knowledge of relating the micro with the macro; and that students have serious difficulties in understanding the propagation of mechanics wave, the speed of wave and superposition, and do not make a distinction between the initial conditions and the medium properties of the system. We find that students inappropriately use the belief of dynamics when answering questions about wave. The research proves that the preconception is stubborn and immanent, and that it influences the learning of scientific concepts. On the basis of this situation, we analyze and generalize the misconception in these contents which the students of different grades have, ard pursue the causes. The misconception originates mainly from intuition and experience of daily life, which is similar to a simple outlook of the world that is difficult to change, another cause may come from the incorrect relationship between the new concept ard the previous belief in learning physics,. This thesis induces that the situation of students' conceptual understanding at different ages is development course. At last, a discussion of teaching physical concepts is given and suggestions are made. We thirk that preconception should be taken into...