Abstract
Over the past decade, physicists, psychologists and science educators have been conducting research that has yielded detailed information about how students learn physics. Some investigators have used physics as a context for examining cognitive processes and approaches to problem-solving. For others, the primary emphasis has been on conceptual understanding in a particular area of physics such as mechanics, electricity, heat or optics. Regardless of the motivation behind the research, the results indicate that similar difficulties occur among students of different ages and ability, often in spite of formal study in physics. The persistence of these difficulties suggests that they are not easily overcome, and need to be addressed explicitly during instruction.
Keywords
Context (archaeology)Conceptual changeCognitionEpistemologyMathematics educationEngineering ethicsCognitive scienceManagement sciencePhysicsPsychologyEngineeringNeuroscience
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
The effect of Interactive Lecture Demonstrations on students’ understanding of heat and temperature: a study from Thailand
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of Interactive Lecture Demonstrations over traditional instruction on university students' understanding of heat a...
Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom
We investigate if the gender gap in conceptual understanding in an introductory university physics course can be reduced by using interactive engagement methods that promote in-...
Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning
Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumpti...
Problem-Based Learning: Where Did it Come from, What Does it Do, and Where is it Going?
Problem-based learning, unbeknownst to many educators, has been around for two decades. A brief history of the evolution of PBL shows innovation comprised of four elements: an i...
Bibliographic Instruction in the Health Sciences
In the 1980s, biomedical indexing and bibliography are at a level unmatched in history. In spite of a monumental effort by librarians, information specialists, and indexers, a l...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1984
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 24-32
- Citations
- 615
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
615
OpenAlex
Cite This
Lillian C. McDermott
(1984).
Research on conceptual understanding in mechanics.
Physics Today
, 37
(7)
, 24-32.
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2916318
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1063/1.2916318