Combining DoV framework and methodological preconceptions to improve student’s electrical circuit solving strategies

Abstract

Our research studies about student’s prior knowledge acting as learning difficulties (referred to as preconceptions) in electricity courses at university level led us to define knowledge as the association of two elements: a model and a domain of validity (DoV). This statement is the core of the DoV framework. This framework reveals its powerfulness in the way it helps teachers to map students’ cognitive structures, to identify their preconceptions as well as to derive effective teaching strategies. Quantitative experimentations we carry out indicate a lack of global circuit solving strategy among students. Especially, they highlight the fact that the difficulties encountered by those students in network analysis are not that much relying on the mastering of solving methods but on the method selection process. This lack of solving strategy prevents the students to grasp the domain of validity of the solving methods they master, so to associate the relevant methods with the suitable circuits. This paper depicts how the application of the DoV framework to this problem-solving process reveals to be a great tool to identify and tackle students’ (methodological) preconceptions as well as to formalize, rationalize and simplify complex solving strategies making them easier to explain, teach and learn.