Identification of student difficulties in understanding kinematics: focus of study on the topic of acceleration

Abstract

To design a quality lecture is necessary to identify the difficulties in understanding the concepts experienced by students. This research was a survey study that aims to identify the difficulties experienced by students in understanding the concept of kinematics, which is focused on the topic of acceleration. Seven reasoned multiple-choice questions were given to 159 physics and physics education students at the State University of Malang to archive this goal. The questions used in this study are presented in various representations, namely mathematical, verbal, pictures, and graphics. Based on the results of the analysis, the average percentage of students who answered correctly was 30.47. It can be concluded that students who understand the concept of kinematics are still low. This research shows that students still have difficulty understanding the concept of acceleration if the questions are presented in various representations.

Thematic Analysis of Indonesian Physics Education Research Literature Using Machine Learning

“…One of the research questions explored in this topic is identifying conceptual knowledge about physics performed by Indonesian students [106,107,[224][225][226][227] or physics teachers [106,[228][229][230]. They investigated conceptual physics understanding on mechanics [107,227,231,232], electricity [224,228,230], magnetism [226], fluid [104,229], work and energy [225,233,234], thermodynamics [106], and modern physics [235].…”

“…One of the research questions explored in this topic is identifying conceptual knowledge about physics performed by Indonesian students [106,107,[224][225][226][227] or physics teachers [106,[228][229][230]. They investigated conceptual physics understanding on mechanics [107,227,231,232], electricity [224,228,230], magnetism [226], fluid [104,229], work and energy [225,233,234], thermodynamics [106], and modern physics [235]. Within the context of the Indonesian PER literature, we propagate conceptual understanding in another form of multiple representations [225,236,237], including external representation [105], mental model [238], drawing ability on free-body diagram [239,240], and mathematical representation [232].…”

“…Furthermore, diverse difficulties also have been discovered within the literature [227,234]. Various terminologies have emerged from Indonesian PER literatures to define the students' lack of understanding about conceptual physics, namely alternative conception [103,241], misconception [104,231,233,235,236,[242][243][244][245][246][247][248][249][250], and misunderstanding [251].…”

Vehicle Directional Cosine Calculation Method

“…Ayop [7] evaluated the assessments themselves and resulting teaching strategies for kinematics. Shodiqin [8] very recently elaborated student difficulties in understanding kinematics, while Núñez [9] shortly afterwards elaborated some difficulties themselves hinting at the relative importance of re-thinking the topic's pedagogical methods. After these recommendations, Moyo [10] performed a focused case study for high schools in Botswana validating the omnipresent sources of difficulties and potential impacts.…”

“…The subsequent equation of the 3-DCM is for 𝑦𝑦′. To calculate 𝑦𝑦′ the same rectangle 𝐴𝐴𝐵𝐵𝐶𝐶𝐷𝐷 �������� , the two triangles and the defined angles from previous Figures (3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8) will be used except focusing on lines 𝐶𝐶 ̅ and 𝐷𝐷 � . Figure 9 shows that P is in the negative axis of 𝑦𝑦′ and is only a portion of line 𝐶𝐶 ̅ .…”