MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS IN DISPELLING SOME COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND INCREASING THE CLARITY OF PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS TAUGHT AT SECONDARY SCHOOL LEVEL

Oct 15, 2026

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Study highlights common misconceptions that hinder secondary-school physics instruction and evaluates a visual-perceptual approach for selected lessons including kinematics, Newton’s laws of motion, equilibrium of forces, and turning effects. Classroom sessions with grade 10 and 11 students used lesson-specific visualization objects, sometimes multiple external representation modes, alongside traditional methods. Outcomes from marks and student/teacher interviews indicate improved clarity through targeted multiple representations and student-centered interactive selection of visualization objects.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Article History

Keywords

1. INTRODUCTION

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Asian Journal of Contemporary Education ISSN(e): 2617-1252 DOI: 10.18488/journal.137.2018.22.122.135 Vol. 2, No. 2, 122-135 © 2018 AESS Publications. All Rights Reserved. [URL:](URL: www.aessweb.com)[ ](URL: www.aessweb.com)[www.aessweb.com](URL: www.aessweb.com) MULTIPLE REPRESENTATIONS IN DISPELLING SOME COMMON MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND INCREASING THE CLARITY OF PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS TAUGHT AT SECONDARY SCHOOL LEVEL Madawala Liyanage Shanaka Piyatissa1+ Md Gapar Md Johar2 Arun Kumar Tarofder3 1,2,3 Graduate School of Management, Management and Science University, Shah Alam, Malaysia (+ Corresponding author) ABSTRACT Article History Received: 30 July 2018 Revised: 17 August 2018 Accepted: 21 August 2018 Published: 27 August 2018 Keywords External representation Internal representation Multiple representations Physics education Visualization Visualization objects. In this study, it is expected to highlight some common illusions that can interfere with classroom teaching of physics at secondary school. Cases cited here surfaced as useful by-products while some experimental teaching sessions were being conducted with grades 10 and 11 students in three government schools in a suburb of Western province in Sri Lanka. The main purpose of that exercise was to test the efficacy of visual-perceptual approach to teaching on some physics lessons, namely, kinematics, Newton’s laws of motion and equilibrium of forces, turning effect of forces etc. It has become necessary to keep an open dialog with students and to get their active participation in the teaching / learning process in order to prepare a suitable visualperpetual assessment tool to measure their performance at the end of the teaching exercise. This teaching sessions spans for about 15 hours after school and spread over three months (each period being 40 minutes duration) . These classes were held with the help of the respective science teachers of the school. The problematic cases for the students that will be discussed in detail later were successfully tackled by employing appropriate lesson specific visualization objects in conjunction with existing traditional methods of teaching. Sometimes more than one visualization mode (external representations) had to be used to facilitate better understanding of the same principle. End result seemed satisfactory in terms of marks scored for the visual-perceptual assessment tool and, student and teacher interviews. Contribution/ Originality: This study document aims at encouraging curriculum developers and teachers to use multiple representations to supplement the textual (or verbal) mode in the same sequential order in which the text is presented. Student centered interactive teaching can guide the teacher on selecting suitable visualization objects appropriate to student and lesson. 1. INTRODUCTION Certain topics categorized under the subject ‘physics’ today have been in association with mankind since time immemorial. In their day-to-day work, they had to experience force, energy, speed and different types of motion, friction, pressure, etc. Up to the present day, manual workers capable of doing marvelous jobs involving the principles underlying these phenomena are not uncommon. For example, in villages, one can see tree cutters, removing unwieldy branches with surprising accuracy and dexterity in dropping the cut pieces of logs in narrow spaces. Unification of these not-much-educated people’s souls with such things as equilibrium of forces, the resultant of more than one force-very often the gravity and a pull exerted with a rope-, etc. are marvelous things to behold. Cycling, driving and carpentry are abundant with such maneuvers. All these manual workers get their training in traditional ways and they lack proper scientific training. Therefore, these workers themselves and the society they live in can have certain amount of imperfections in their knowledge regarding certain aspects of these

FAQs

What misconceptions does the study address in secondary school physics teaching?

It targets common misunderstandings that interfere with classroom teaching, such as beliefs about constant force causing continuous acceleration, misconceptions about light/heavy objects under gravity, and difficulties using circuit diagram knowledge for practical wiring.

Which physics topics were tested using the visual-perceptual approach?

The study focuses on physics lessons including kinematics, Newton’s laws of motion, equilibrium of forces, and turning effects of forces.

How were visualization objects used during instruction?

Lesson-specific visualization objects were used alongside traditional teaching methods, and more than one external representation mode was sometimes applied to support understanding of the same principle.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Dipper