Unpacking physics representations: Towards an appreciation of disciplinary affordance

Abstract

This theoretical article problematizes the access to disciplinary knowledge that different physics representations have the possibility to provide; that is, their disciplinary affordances. It is argued that historically such access has become increasingly constrained for students as physics representations have been rationalized over time. Thus, the case is made that such rationalized representations, while powerful for communication from a disciplinary point of view, manifest as learning challenges for students. The proposal is illustrated using a vignette from a student discussion in the physics laboratory about circuit connections for an experimental investigation of the charging and discharging of a capacitor. It is concluded that in order for students to come to appreciate the disciplinary affordances of representations, more attention needs to be paid to their "unpacking." Building on this conclusion, two questions are proposed that teachers can ask themselves in order to begin to unpack the representations that they use in their teaching. The paper ends by proposing directions for future research in this area.

Challenging assumptions of notational transparency: the case of vectors in engineering mathematics

“…The research project discussed in this paper indicates that notation is not transparent for students, even though it might be so for experts [28]. The students writing the test were at least in their fourth semester of their engineering degrees and were all mathematically competent students.…”

“…Today both notations are ubiquitous in mathematics textbooks and are treated as transparent and interchangeable. One text may refer to the parenthesis notation as 'common' or 'standard' [6], while another will refer to unit vector notation in similar terms [28], neither text spending much or any time on the alternate notation.…”

Case study: coordinating among multiple semiotic resources to solve complex physics problems

“…The disciplinary affordance of a given semiotic resource is "the inherent potential of that [semiotic resource] to provide access to disciplinary knowledge." [8], allowing researchers to investigate how semiotic resources' affordances connect to disciplinary ideas.…”

Impact of the second semester University Modeling Instruction course on students’ representation choices

“…Using different representations can be especially productive if there are multiple tasks or if students prefer one representation over another [5] since each of these representations (i.e., graph, table, equations) of a data set highlight different salient features of the situation that may not be obvious from the others. Multiple representations can also aid students by dividing the information and thus reducing cognitive load [6,7]. By offering more than one means to the correct answer and highlighting different or overlapping information, multiple representations have been shown to increase students' ability to solve problems [7][8][9].…”

“…That being said, representation use is a skill that students develop [6,[34][35][36]. Kohl and Finkelstein show that while both expert and novice physics problem solvers use multiple representations, they use them in distinctly different ways: experts are able to move between representations more quickly and are more flexible in their starting point, whereas novices use and jump between more representations in total [37].…”