Alternative conceptions become obstacles in physics. However, it is difficult to find instruments that can identify students' alternative conceptions, especially in gases kinetic theory (DIGaKiT). The purpose of this research was to development of diagnostic instrument of DIGaKiT in identifying students' alternative conceptions by Rasch analysis…

The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to develop and validate a three-tier diagnostic test on work, power, and energy (WPE) concepts and (2) to identify Turkish pre-service science teachers' conceptual understanding through this test. The Work, Power, and Energy Concept Test (WPECT) was developed through interviews, read-aloud sessions, and…

Existing accounts of student thinking about mechanical wave propagation and superposition emphasize that students sometimes treat wave pulses as objects, saying, for example, that pulses bounce off of one another when they meet. In this paper, we present a context in which students explicitly reason about pulses as not-objects, instead describing…

Current research in physics shows that pre-service teachers have poor content knowledge in vector-kinematics. This study describes the types of categories of conceptions pre-service teachers display in vector-kinematics. Descriptive and interpretive qualitative research was conducted in which the data were concept maps from 28 third-year…

There is a huge body of research supporting a positive correlation between teachers' content knowledge and better pedagogical practice. In this context, this study revealed serious gaps in a cohort of preservice physics teachers' understanding of the simple pendulum. It also pointed to their poor grasp of some fundamental concepts in physics.…

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…

Describes a study of high school students' and chemistry teachers' understanding of the gas laws which focused on the application of scientific concepts in practical situations instead of mathematical calculations in theoretical situations. (Contains 13 references.) (WRM)