The Studies On High School Students’ Mental Models In Wave Optics Concepts Learning

The mental model is a gradually formed representation of the objective world when individuals contact with objective things,which determines people how to view the world.For the discipline of physics,people with different mental models will use different analytical methods and ultimately reach different conclusions in the same physical situation.Therefore,it is extremely essential to deeply explore the internal representation model of students’ understanding of problems – the mental model.The new curriculum reform advocates teaching to improve students’ core accomplishment,but many teachers have gradually lost their original intention of teaching and regard examination points as the focus of teaching.Compared to mechanics and electromagnetism,the content of high school wave optics has a low score in the college entrance examination,inevitably,some teachers will be perfunctory in teaching.Therefore,many students have a difficult,abstract,and cluttered impression of high school optical content.In the final analysis,it is because students do not have a correct understanding of the basic concepts of wave optics,and are prone to adopt incorrect mental models when facing specific physical situations.Therefore,it is extremely important to explore the specific content of students’ mental models of wave optics concepts and to research how to transform the confusing models of wave optics concepts into scientific models through teaching strategies.This thesis aims to explore students’ models in wave optics Concepts Learning,combining quantitative questionnaires and qualitative case interview studies.Firstly,based on reading the literature,a "Wave Optics Concept Questionnaire" was compiled around the concept of wave optics,and 245 high school students in Wuhan were surveyed.According to the questionnaire scores,three levels of mental models were divided: elementary,intermediate,and advanced.Subsequently,through the specific analysis of the items,34 different ideas that exist in students’ learning of wave optics concepts and their distribution among students at different mental model levels were obtained.Based on this,an interview outline was prepared for typical questions in the questionnaire.Six students were interviewed in a semi structured manner.According to the interview content,52 mental models were obtained for the 14 core concepts of wave optics,and the following six characteristics of mental models were summarized for students at three mental model levels:1.Uniqueness: Different students have different and unique understandings of the same concept of wave optics.2.Implicit: The mental model is built inside the mind of students based on individual experience.Interviews can more effectively guide students to the mental model of wave optics concept learning than questionnaires.3.Incomplete: Most students exhibit a superstitious model and some scientific models for the concept of wave optics.Even scientific models are limited to high school knowledge.4.Simplicity: Students tend to understand and explain the concept of rational wave optics using their relatively simple knowledge of geometric optics and waves5.Comprehensive and situational: When learning and applying wave optics concepts,students often use multiple mental models of different concepts based on different physical contexts.6.Generality and Specificity: Students often use a mental model to explain multiple concepts or solve a class of problems.However,with the deepening of knowledge understanding and learning,the mental model tends to become specific.Finally,based on the above research,the author proposes the following five suggestions for the teaching of wave optics in high school physics:1.Correct teaching approach.Although the content of wave optics is only a relatively small proportion in the college entrance examination,teachers should not take it lightly.They must be based on improving students’ core literacy and guiding students to establish scientific concepts of wave optics.2.Emphasize the accuracy of the content.In the teaching process,teachers should achieve "accurate content and precise language." For example,in the Yang’s double slit experiment,it is important to avoid using words that embody geometric optics such as "two beams of light" or "light hitting the same point on the screen." Instead,it is important to emphasize the volatility of light and allow students to establish consistent and scientific conceptual models of wave optics.3.Strengthen conceptual analysis.In this study,multiple students have been exposed to confuse interference and diffraction patterns.Therefore,teachers should pay attention to summarizing and contrasting the concepts of wave optics in their teaching.They can also guide students to correctly define the concept of wave optics in their own language to help them remember and improve learning efficiency.4.Create situations to deepen perceptual understanding.Physics teachers should create physics scenarios and use simple and easy to operate experiments to stimulate students’ interest in learning.For example,conducting double slit interference and single slit diffraction experiments using laser pens,playing cards,and art knives can enhance students’ perceptual understanding of the concept of wave optics.