Spectrum of physics comprehension

Abstract

The paper presents the results of research on the relationship between self-assessed comprehension of physics lectures and final grades of junior high school students (aged 13–15), high school students (aged 16–18) and physics students at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland (aged 21). Students' declared level of comprehension was measured during a physics lecture on a prearranged scale of 1–10 with the use of a personal response system designed for the purpose of this experiment. Through the use of this tool, we obtained about 2000 computer records of students' declared comprehension of a 45 min lecture, which we named ‘the spectrum of comprehension’. In this paper, we present and analyse the correlation between students' declared comprehension of the content presented in the lecture and their final learning results.

The Role of Dimensional Analysis in Teaching Physics

“…Marusic 23 shows that traditionally formulated numerical exercises, which are frequently used in teaching physics, do not develop students abilities in physical thinking to a desirable extent, and thus fail to fulfill one of the most important aims of teaching physics. Blasiak 24 states that comprehension in physics is a complex and multi-stage process. It is relatively easy to describe a phenomenon, but more difficult to explain it, whereas predicting it, which in fact is the crowning achievement of adequate comprehension, seems to be the most difficult task of all.…”