Students’ Ability to Work With Graphs in Physics Studies Related to Three Typical Student Groups

Abstract

Graphs are often used to represent mathematical functions, to illustrate data from social and natural sciences, or to specify scientific theories. With increasing emphasis on the development of scientific research skills, the work with graphs and data interpretation are gaining in importance. The research involved an eye-tracking experiment conducted to evaluate student work with graphs in physics. Eye-movement data were recorded using the GazePoint eye-tracker.A total of 40 third-year grammar school students participated in the research. These students were allocated into three groups by a physics teacher. These groups were called PLUS, AVERAGE and MINUS. The PLUS group showed excellent results in education and included gifted physics students. The MINUS group was composed of the opposite end of this cognitive spectrum, whose members made the most mistakes in graph reading. The aim of the experiment was to find the differences between students allocated to these three groups and to evaluate whether the allocation based on the teacher's experience, long-term observations and the students' previous achievements was sufficient. The results showed that students from all three groups had problems with reading graphs in physics. According to the eye-movement data, several students who had been incorrectly assigned to groups were identified.

A Cross-Country Comparison of Students’ Graphs Understanding and Perceived Mental Effort

“…Therefore, the low results can be understood as students' lower ability to think critically: they cannot apply their knowledge in new unknown situations given by the questions. This can be a problem because when teachers want to give students a complete idea of phenomena and processes described and interpreted in physics, they use graphs for that [1]. Therefore, in order to participate in physics classes, students need to understand the message communicated by graphs [7].…”

“…Contemporary society problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and trends in world stock exchanges, emphasize the importance of understanding a different kinds of numerical graphs. People need to know how to make those numbers talk [1] (p. 299) and how to read the data as well as between and beyond the data [2] (p. 36). Researchers' interest in graphs dates back to 1875 [3].…”

“…Graphs are powerful visual pattern-recognition tools to see trends and spot subtle differences in shape [4,5]. In physics, graphs are used to visualize the mutual dependencies between physical quantities [1] (p. 299). Therefore, physics teachers tend to use graphs as a second language, assuming that their students can extract most of their rich information content, but it is often an incorrect assumption [4,6].…”

“…The importance of understanding the graphs can be seen in correlation with students' spatial ability. According to Kozhevnikov et al, spatial ability might be necessary for visualizing invisible phenomena and processes such as electric or magnetic field lines or electric current [1] (p. 301). Therefore, it is crucial to find an appropriate teaching approach that will cause higher student achievement.…”

Differences in Thematic Map Reading by Students and Their Geography Teacher

“…The results showed it was suitable for use in research. GazePoint 3 has also been used in studies in the field of neurosciences [62], marketing [63], mathematics [64], physics [65], kinesiology, and sports science [66]. A comprehensive list of publications concerning the GazePoint tracker is available at https://www.gazept.com/meet-the-team/publications/.…”