DC circuits: III. The complex terrain of sense-making

摘要

The present paper, the third in a series of three, is part of a fine-grained investigation of student understanding of DC circuits using the eight question instrument the Aspects of Circuits Questionnaire. In paper I the forced choice responses from the instrument showed that student responses were highly context dependent while in paper II key foothold ideas and reasoning were identified from the free writing responses. The present paper, based on six micro-episodes that are presented from four follow-up interviews, sketches the complex cognitive terrain that students must negotiate in order to create a sense-making path that links complex everyday experience, mathematical reasoning and language connotations with the idealised physics model. From a pedagogical perspective this presents deep challenges as seemingly trivial everyday experiences, correct but non-physical mathematical interpretations and language nuances can trigger large differences in individual student understanding relative to the physics that we are trying to teach. Each broad area, refinement of everyday experience, interpretation of equations and the meaning of words, is a key part of physics modelling.