
Open access
Author
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Date
2017-01Type
- Journal Article
Citations
Cited 11 times in
Web of Science
Cited 14 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
The kinematics concept test (KCT) is a multiple-choice test designed to evaluate students’ conceptual understanding of kinematics at the high school level. The test comprises 49 multiple-choice items about velocity and acceleration, which are based on seven kinematic concepts and which make use of three different representations. In the first part of this article we describe the development and the validation process of the KCT. We applied the KCT to 338 Swiss high school students who attended traditional teaching in kinematics. We analyzed the response data to provide the psychometric properties of the test. In the second part we present the results of a structural analysis of the test. An exploratory factor analysis of 664 student answers finally uncovered the seven kinematics concepts as factors. However, the analysis revealed a hierarchical structure of concepts. At the higher level, mathematical concepts group together, and then split up into physics concepts at the lower level. Furthermore, students who seem to understand a concept in one representation have difficulties transferring the concept to similar problems in another representation. Both results have implications for teaching kinematics. First, teaching mathematical concepts beforehand might be beneficial for learning kinematics. Second, instructions have to be designed to teach students the change between different representations. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000193927Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Physical Review. Special Topics. Physics Education ResearchVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
American Physical SocietyOrganisational unit
03753 - Stern, Elsbeth / Stern, Elsbeth
03815 - Vaterlaus, Andreas / Vaterlaus, Andreas
Funding
146038 - Fostering Concept Knowledge by Formative Assessment in High School Teaching of Physics (SNF)
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Show all metadata
Citations
Cited 11 times in
Web of Science
Cited 14 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics