engleski

University students' understanding of graphs in different contexts

Over the last 10 years Physics Education Group at University of Zagreb has investigated student understanding of several physics topics, such as Newton's laws, electromagnetism, atomic line spectra, and kinematic graphs, as well as developed and tested teaching materials that addressed some of the problems identified through research. Paralelly the group has focused on the problem of how to bring measurements in PER closer to the standards of physics measurements, which led to the use of Rasch modeling, and the evaluation of functioning of important diagnostic instruments in PER, such as the FCI and the CSEM. Another line of research in collaboration with neuroscientists involved studies on student ability of proportional reasoning and of solving simple mathematical equations. A short overview of the group’s most important research findings will be presented and linked with the findings of the international PER community. The results of the study on university students' understanding of graphs in different domains (mathematics, physics and contexts other than physics) will be discussed in more detail. Eight sets of parallel mathematics, physics and other context questions (e.g. economy, biology, everyday life) about graphs were developed and administered to 385 first year physics or mathematics majors at University of Zagreb. The solving of the three questions in each particular set required the same mathematical procedure, but the interpretation of the meaning of the obtained solution differed. The findings of the study suggest that students’ mathematical knowledge is not the most important factor for students' success in solving graph problems in physics, and point to important context - dependent differences in students' approaches to similar problems. The implications of the study for teaching and future research will be discussed.

physics education research; graphs; Rasch modelling

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