Graphical representations of data are common in many disciplines. Previous research has found that physics students appear to have better graph comprehension skills than students from social science disciplines, regardless of the task context. However, the graph comprehension skills of physics students have not yet been compared with (veterinary)…

The understanding of graphs and extraction of relevant information from graphs plays a major role in physics education and is also important in several related fields. Recently, Susac "et al." [Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 14, 020109 (2018)] compared physics and psychology students' understanding of graphs in the contexts of physics and…

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…

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),…

Students' graph comprehension may be affected by the background of the students who are the readers or interpreters of the graph, their knowledge of the context in which the graph is set, and the inferential processes required by the graph operation. This research study investigated these aspects of graph comprehension for 152 first year…