标题:Students’ Representational Fluency at University: A Cross-Sectional Measure of How Multiple Representations are Used by Physics Students Using the Representational Fluency Survey
期刊名称:Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education
印刷版ISSN:1305-8223
电子版ISSN:1305-8223
出版年度:2015
卷号:11
期号:6
页码:1633-1655
DOI:10.12973/eurasia.2015.1427a
出版社:Pamukkale Univ Dept Sci Education
摘要:To succeed withinscientific disciplines, using representations, including those based on words,graphs, equations, and diagrams, is important. Research indicates that the useof discipline specific representations (sometimes referred to as expertgenerated representations), as well as multi-representational use, is criticalfor problem solving and developing understanding. This paper consolidates theseideas using the Representational Fluency Survey (RFS) over two years with 334students at The University of Sydney. Analysis shows that there was asignificant difference between the representational fluency of the 1st yearFundamental and Regular students (low level 1st year physics courses) comparedto the 1st year Advanced, 2nd year, 3rd yearand Postgraduate level students. The existence of this distinct gap is furthersupported by evidence from qualitative coding that students with a high levelof representational fluency use a greater number of representations and morevisual and symbolic representations to explain their answers. There is nomention of such an overall trend of variation of representational use in extantliterature, largely because there have been no studies that comparerepresentational fluency across closely spaced levels of physics, or science,learning.