• Open Access

Conceptual coherence of non-Newtonian worldviews in Force Concept Inventory data

Terry F. Scott and Dániel Schumayer
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 13, 010126 – Published 16 May 2017

Abstract

The Force Concept Inventory is one of the most popular and most analyzed multiple-choice concept tests used to investigate students’ understanding of Newtonian mechanics. The correct answers poll a set of underlying Newtonian concepts and the coherence of these underlying concepts has been found in the data. However, this inventory was constructed after several years of research into the common preconceptions held by students and using these preconceptions as distractors in the questions. Their sole purpose is to deflect non-Newtonian candidates away from the correct answer. Alternatively, one can argue that the responses could also be treated as polling these preconceptions. In this paper we shift the emphasis of the analysis away from the correlation structure of the correct answers and look at the latent traits underlying the incorrect responses. Our analysis models the data employing exploratory factor analysis, which uses regularities in the data to suggest the existence of underlying structures in the cognitive processing of the students. This analysis allows us to determine whether the data support the claim that there are alternate non-Newtonian worldviews on which students’ incorrect responses are based. The existence of such worldviews, and their coherence, could explain the resilience of non-Newtonian preconceptions and would have significant implications to the design of instruction methods. We find that there are indeed coherent alternate conceptions of the world which can be categorized using the results of the research that led to the construction of the Force Concept Inventory.

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  • Received 1 February 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.010126

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Physics Education Research

Authors & Affiliations

Terry F. Scott and Dániel Schumayer*

  • Department of Physics, University of Otago, Dunedin 9106, New Zealand

  • *daniel.schumayer@otago.ac.nz

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Issue

Vol. 13, Iss. 1 — January - June 2017

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