Students Conception of Voltage and Resistance Concepts after Conventional Instruction

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of conceptions reached by students' who learnt the concepts of voltage and resistance with the conventional direct instruction. To answer the research questions, descriptive non-experimental research design was used. A two tier test on the concepts of voltage and resistance was administered to 49 physics and chemistry major first year students in Medda Walabu University, Ethiopia. Students' responses to the five items were qualitatively compared to those found in literature for secondary school and university students. The result showed that the conception of students formed at school level about voltage and resistance were not that much affected even by learning the same concepts at advanced levels and with mathematical rigor at university. Besides, the analysis revealed that students hold multiple opposing ideas regarding the same concept, which contradicts the classical conceptual change perspective. Further, the average conception level reached by the students after learning university level physics courses was "partial understanding". Therefore, attending advanced but traditional course would not enhance students' conceptual understanding. Hence, teachers should have to investigate students' conceptions, as a first step, to subsequently design and implement appropriate instructional interventions.

Assessment of pre-service physics teachers’ conceptual understanding in electricity and magnetism

“…In the Ethiopian context, Eshetu & Alemu (2018) identified levels of conception of voltage and resistance on first year university undergraduate students after taking electricity and magnetism course. The authors reported that the conception of students formed about voltage and resistance were not much affected after taking the same concepts in advanced levels.…”

“…One of the most prominent contributions of physics education researches was its finding that shed light on the failure of traditional instruction focused on rote learning, mere memorization, and naïve quantitative problem solving in teaching introductory physics courses which do not bring conceptual understanding of physics concepts, principles and laws (Fan, 2015;Gerace & Beatty, 2005). Many students completed their study of physics with severe gaps in their conceptual understanding of concepts in many physics topics in a traditional instruction regardless of physics teachers' efforts (Eshetu & Alemu, 2018;Cahyadi, 2007). That is, in one hand, traditional teaching approaches lead to problems of misconceptions and inadequate conceptual understanding in physics concepts, on the other hand; many of the students remain with inadequate explanation of physics concepts after completing traditional instruction.…”

How Difficult are Simple Electrical Circuit Conceptions? New Findings

“…Electricity is one of the areas of physics broadly studied concerning students' conceptual understanding (Leniz et al, 2020). The latest studies report that students have serious difficulties analyzing and describing electrical phenomena (Chang & Shieh, 2018;Eshetu & Alemu, 2018;Frache et al, 2019;Jiang et al, 2018;Kalaya et al, 2019;Manunure et al, 2020;Mbonyiryivuze et al, 2022). The literature has abundant evidence of misconceptions about simple electrical circuits, common even among students who have had formal instruction in the relevant material (Kokkonen & Mäntylä, 2018;Ortega-Alvarez et al, 2018;Villarino, 2018).…”

“…In related investigations on this topic, researchers have found that students come to physics classes having had years of life experience such that they bring a developed and well-established system of common-sense beliefs, sometimes misconceptions, regarding the physical world and how it works (Hestenes et al, 1992). The daily interaction with physical phenomena and the approach that textbooks and teachers' instruction have towards them are some of the elements that lead to these misconceptions-taking the student away from a scientific understanding of the fundamental physics concepts (Eshetu & Alemu, 2018).…”