In science, one of the most crucial representations for constructing meaning about physical events is graphs. The first graph students encounter in science class is the constant velocity motion graph. Therefore, examining students' understanding of structuring and interpreting these graphs for the relationship between distance, time, and velocity…

Tanzanian secondary school students have consistently performed poorly in the topic of motion in a straight line, which involves kinematics formulas and graphs. Despite instruction, many struggle to plot and interpret these graphs, largely due to limited conceptual understanding among both learners and teachers. This study examines the conceptual…

Student difficulties with making sense of graphs in physics have been thoroughly reported. In the study of one-dimensional waves, the issue is even trickier since the amplitude is a function of two variables (position and time). In this work, we investigate students' reasoning and difficulties with interpreting the graphical representation of the…

We used a sequential synthesis problem to investigate novice teachers' conceptual difficulties in hydrodynamics. Twenty-one new secondary level physics teachers from various regions of China, who had been in service for no more than 2 years, participated in the study. Each participant completed a written hydrodynamics problem consisting of four…

This paper presents preparations, execution and reflection on results for the physics part of a CSI task for the European Union Science Olympiad 2010, taking place at the University of Gothenburg. The participants were required to make a graph of the cooling of a swede ("Brassica napus"), as a proxy for the cooling of a murder victim,…

Studies on student learning of scientific concepts have shown that students often experience various difficulties in understanding basic physics concepts such as vector quantities, as a result of formal and informal learning. The purpose of the present study is to document Grade 11 students' difficulties in understanding vectors and their…

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (HRD) is a fundamental representation in stellar physics. It contains information about key properties of stars and allows inferences about stellar evolution. The use of the HRD is an important disciplinary activity in astrophysics. For example, it is particularly important to have a graphical understanding of the…

This research considered students' abilities to read images about dispersed systems, taken from the chemistry textbook. 103 high school students (37 males, 63 females, and 3 unknown) from the school "Svetozar Markovic" in Novi Sad, Republic of Serbia, were included as the research participants. Students' abilities to suggest the titles…

Chemical equilibrium is one of the most important concepts in chemistry. The changes in properties of the chemical system at equilibrium induced by variations in pressure, volume, temperature, and concentration are always included in classroom teaching and discussions. This work introduces a novel, geometrical approach to understanding the…

Understanding a graph in pairs, in a productive way, improves the comprehension of a concept. In this research, we had 2 objectives: 1) to delve deep into the behavior of 15 pairs of remedial physics students when solving a problem with a graph of velocity, 2) to understand the interchange of personal meanings during their interactions. We posed…

This paper explores students' ability to analyse and interpret empirical data as inadequate data analysis skills and understandings may contribute to the renowned disappointing outcomes of practical work in secondary school physics. Selected competences, derived from a collection of leading curricula, are explored through interviews and practical…

The graph understanding for mastering the natural science concepts through the process skills approach aims to improve student ability in lower secondary school. In this study, we conducted a series of quasi-experiments for participants by using pre-test and post-test. The research instruments consisted of two tests and the questionnaires. After…

Previous studies have identified physics students' difficulties with graph slope and area under a graph in different contexts. In this study we compared physics and nonphysics (psychology) students' understanding of graphs; i.e., we evaluated the effects of concept (graph slope vs area under graph), type of question (qualitative vs quantitative),…

Representational competence is essential for the acquisition of conceptual understanding in physics. It enables the interpretation of diagrams, graphs, and mathematical equations, and relating these to one another as well as to observations and experimental outcomes. In this study, we present the initial validation of a newly developed…

This study aims to examine the effectiveness of metacognitive scaffolding in different inquiry tasks related to optics. Two high school classes participated in this study. One class, the treatment group (n = 33), which integrated metacognitive prompts into the simulation-based inquiry, was compared to the other class, the control group (n = 34),…