Naive Students' Conceptual Development and Beliefs:The Need for Multiple Analyses to Determine whatContributes to Student Success in a UniversityIntroductory Physics Course

摘要

This research involved naive physics learners who were interested in majoring inscience or engineering. In a semester-long quasi-experimental study, open-ended pretests andweekly interviews were used to analyse the progressive development of students' conceptionsrelating to sound and wave motion. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted toelucidate: (1) how their conceptions developed from everyday conceptions to unclear scientificconceptions to scientific conceptions, and (2) their beliefs of physics knowledge. Despite effortsto enable these students to learn physics, the findings showed that only two out of ten studentsdeveloped acceptable physics conceptions during the course that would enable them to pursuethe subject to a higher level. Also, students' conceptual development was found to be related totheir cognitive understanding and to epistemological beliefs of physics. Therefore, to facilitatenaive physics learners' success in a general physics course, in addition to the acquisition ofcontent knowledge, explicit emphasis needs to be placed on the nature of physics knowledge.