Examining Grade 11 science students’ difficulties in learning about vector operations

Abstract

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 associated concepts. Specifically, the study tried to find answers to questions about the overall level of difficulty experienced by Grade 11 students about vectors, the nature of these difficulties, and their association with operations, such as scalars, adding vectors graphically, determining vector magnitude and direction, and multiplying vectors by numbers. Altogether, 58 Grade 11 students participated in this study. The study employed a specifically adapted test to assess participants’ understanding of vectors in relation to: (1) identifying whether students can distinguish between vectors and scalars, (2) adding vectors graphically, (3) determining the vector magnitude and direction, and (4) multiplying vectors by numbers. The findings suggested that, although most students were able to distinguish between vectors and scalars, they had experienced various difficulties in understanding operations in relation to adding vectors, graphically and mathematically, determining vector magnitudes and directions, and multiplying vectors by numbers. The findings were discussed within the recent UAE educational reform policy.

Enhancing students’ understanding of vectors through personalized adaptive learning

“…Knight studied the qualitative as well as quantitative knowledge of students for vectors. A study [10] conducted on 11th-grade students suggested that most students had difficulties in graphical and analytical vector addition, vector multiplication and determining magnitude and direction of vectors. Numerous incorrect preconceptions among high school students about the role and significance of the velocity vector components have been reported [11].…”

Conexiones matemáticas asociadas al concepto vector en un texto de secundaria de la Nueva Escuela Mexicana

“…Sierpinska et al (1999) conciben al vector como una invariante de representaciones, interpretada en el contexto de la física como dibujos de flechas que representan fuerzas y sus combinaciones actuando sobre objetos. Sin embargo, vector es un concepto matemático del cual se ha documentado que estudiantes de diferentes niveles educativos tienen dificultades, tales como: trabajar con su representación gráfica, distinguir entre suma y resta de vectores, determinar su dirección y calcular su magnitud (Barniol & Zavala, 2014a;Carli et al, 2020;Latifa et al, 2021;Tairab et al, 2020). En particular, se ha reportado que algunas dificultades con el concepto vector se originan en nivel básico secundaria (12-15 años), ya que los estudiantes no desarrollan suficientes habilidades en torno a dicho concepto (Flores-García et al, 2007).…”

Teachers’ and Students’ Attitudes Toward Online Physics Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic in UAE

“…The UAE has engaged in online education to cope with the challenges caused by the pandemic. Due to the abstract nature of physics concepts which may require high cognitive ability to comprehend as suggested by Tairab et al (2020), physics content would be more difficult for students to master through online learning. In addition, Sari et al (2019) argued that the mathematical complexity of physics can quickly overwhelm students' intuition.…”