Pre-Service Teachers’ Knowledge of Relational Structure of Physics Concepts: Finding Key Concepts of Electricity and Magnetism

Abstract

Relational interlinked dependencies between concepts constitute the structure of abstract knowledge and are crucial in learning conceptual knowledge and the meaning of concepts. To explore pre-service teachers’ declarative knowledge of physics concepts, we have analyzed concept networks, which agglomerate 12 pre-service teacher students’ representations of the key elements in electricity and magnetism. We show that by using network-based methods, the interlinked connections of nodes, locally and globally, can be analyzed to reveal how different elements of the network are supported through their connections to other nodes in the network. Nodes with high global connectivity initialize contiguous concept patchworks within the network and are thus most often found to be abstract, general, and advanced concepts. Locally cohesive concepts, on the other hand, are nearly always auxiliary supporting concepts, related to specific textbook-type experiments and model-type conceptional elements. Comparisons of group-level knowledge and individual pre-service teacher students’ knowledge in the form of networks shows that while in group-level the aggregated knowledge is expert-like, at the individual level pre-service teacher students possess only a fraction of that knowledge.

Forma mentis networks quantify crucial differences in STEM perception between students and experts

“…This finding provides evidence that at a global level Italian students possess a good technical awareness of STEM subjects in comparison with STEM professionals. Analogously, a comparable level of student competence has also been reported in other educational systems, such as the Finnish one, by independent studies from Koponen and Maija using concept maps (Ismo T. Koponen & Nousiainen, 2019).…”

“…We emphasize that the addition of valence attributes and the adoption of free associations makes forma mentis networks different from conceptual maps (Ismo T. Koponen & Nousiainen, 2018, 2019Ismo T Koponen & Pehkonen, 2010; FORMA MENTIS NETWORKS IN STEM 7 Sayama, Cramer, Porter, Sheetz, & Uzzo, 2016), which represent important network models of knowledge acquisition and structuring during learning but do not incorporate information about how learners perceive individual conceptual units. Another difference is that conceptual maps are often based on concept co-occurrence in a syllabus and therefore capture temporal information (Ismo T. Koponen & Nousiainen, 2019), which is not present in a forma mentis network.…”

Pre-Service Teachers’ Declarative Knowledge of Wave-Particle Dualism of Electrons and Photons: Finding Lexicons by Using Network Analysis

“…However, in many cases the knowledge of interest cannot be assumed to be an outcome of associations, but instead of rule-based (law-like) connections. In such cases, counting which is more sensitive to global connectivity is needed [7,[9][10][11]. The method used here to find the connectivity of terms is based on so-called communicability centrality [25], which has proven to be a relevant operationalization in the case of concept networks [9][10][11].…”

“…The mental models may thus not be as directly accessible through students' expressions as assumed by interpretative analyses of students' explanations, in the form of declarative (i.e., written or spoken) knowledge [8]. Therefore, some recent research in science education has turned to investigating students' linguistic expression of their knowledge [7,[9][10][11][12][13]. This "linguistic" turn is supported by cognitive linguistics, which provides support for making a sharper distinction between accessible targets of research and their underlying deeper structures.…”

“…Based on that data, we construct the lexical network that each pre-service teacher attaches to electrons and photons. The lexicons, which condense the relevant and nearly synonymous terms found in lexical networks, are then formed by applying network analysis [9][10][11]. The most basic lexicon needed to discuss electrons and photons can be constructed from terms that can be categorized into eight different property classes which are relevant in the context of wave-particle dualism.…”