CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Physics is the natural science concerned with matter, energy, motion and force. Motion is the change in an object's position over time, and a force is a push or pull that can change an object's state of motion. Because physics underlies the other sciences and explains natural phenomena, it is often described as the most fundamental of them. It is not a collection of facts and formulae to be memorised. Meaningful learning in physics requires students to build connected ideas, and many students still find it difficult, which is reflected in low achievement in the subject.

Many factors affect students' achievement in physics, including mathematics ability, cognitive development, attitude towards the subject, prior experience, socio-economic status, age and gender. Among these, students' preconceptions play a prominent role. Preconceptions are the ideas students already hold about a concept before formal teaching begins. They come largely from everyday experience and often conflict with scientific explanations, so they can interfere with new learning. Research on force and motion illustrates this clearly. Historically, Aristotle held that motion requires a continuing force, and many present-day students hold a similar view. Bao and Redish (2006) note that the connection between force and motion has been studied thoroughly and that the most common incorrect student model is the idea that there is always a force in the direction of motion. Students also commonly think of force as something an object carries, called impetus, that is used up as the object moves, whereas the Newtonian view is that an object continues in uniform motion unless an external force acts on it. Özcan and Bezen (2016) found that prospective teachers held three different mental models relating force and velocity, one of which was scientific (the Newtonian model) while the other two were unscientific and were labelled the Aristotelian and impulsive models. Because students often hold more than one of these models at once, their understanding of force and motion is better described as a mixture of models than as simply right or wrong.

Conceptual understanding is a person's connected representation of the main ideas in a domain. It is rich in relationships and is not gained by rote learning. It is different from procedural understanding, which concerns rules, algorithms and symbolic procedures. The two develop together: Rittle-Johnson et al. (2001) found that conceptual understanding and procedural skill develop in an iterative way, each supporting the other. Conceptual understanding enables students to transfer what they have learned to new situations and to apply physics principles in different contexts, whereas knowledge that is memorised for an examination is quickly lost. This is why correct answers alone are an inadequate measure of understanding. A student may give the right answer for a wrong reason, or a wrong answer that reflects a partly correct idea.

Researchers have developed conceptual assessments to look beyond right and wrong answers. The Force Concept Inventory (Hestenes et al., 1992) and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (Thornton & Sokoloff, 1998) probe students' understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Their results show that Newtonian understanding of force remains difficult for students in many settings, and that many students keep non-Newtonian ideas after instruction. Classical test theory scores such tests only by the number of correct answers, whereas item response theory models the probability of success at the level of the item. Model analysis goes further by examining which underlying model of reasoning a student applies in answering a set of related questions (Bao & Redish, 2006). In this study, students' responses to force and motion items are characterised in terms of three models: the Newtonian model, which is the correct one, the impetus model, which is close to the correct view, and the Aristotelian model, which is regarded as a null or fully incorrect option.

Several abilities may help students to form correct physics concepts. Scientific explanation of phenomena requires students to link observations to underlying concepts and representations. Yeo and Gilbert (2022) show that students' explanations in physics involve different levels of conceptualisation, from the macroscopic to the theoretical and relational, supported by different kinds of representation. Imagination is also increasingly regarded as part of science learning, because students must often imagine phenomena that are not available to them directly, and imagination can help their meaning-making to expand and become more refined (Hilppö et al., 2016). Concept formation, the process by which learners organise their experiences into scientific concepts, is the third variable of interest. This study therefore examines scientific explanation of phenomenon, imagination and concept formation as correlates of students' understanding of physics concepts, with understanding assessed through force and motion.

Gender and school location are two other variables that may influence conceptual understanding, and the evidence on them is mixed. Docktor and Heller (2008) found a significant gender gap in pre-test Force Concept Inventory scores that persisted after instruction, although there was little gender difference in course performance. In Nigeria, Akanbi et al. (2016) reported that male senior secondary physics students in Ilorin performed significantly better than female students, and Sadare et al. (2021) similarly reported that male and urban students performed better in physics than female and rural students. In contrast, Abamba (2021) found no significant difference between urban and rural students' achievement in physics in Delta State when they were taught with the 5E learning cycle. These differing results show that the influence of gender and location on physics learning has not been settled, particularly where students' conceptual understanding rather than examination scores is concerned.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The academic achievement of secondary school students is a continuing concern to parents, administrators, educators and researchers. Poor achievement in science, especially physics, is of particular concern, and it can have personal and social consequences for students who fail to obtain the grades needed for admission into higher institutions.

Students learn physics gradually, and their ideas can pass from naive or no-knowledge states, through common-sense or impetus ideas, to scientific understanding. In Nigeria, however, students' achievement in physics is usually assessed by conventional achievement tests that report only overall scores. Such tests do not show the stage that a student has reached or which model of reasoning the student is using, so they give little information about how conceptual understanding is developing.

In addition, it has not been firmly established whether gender and school location influence students' conceptual understanding of force and motion. Existing studies on achievement in physics report conflicting results (Akanbi et al., 2016; Abamba, 2021; Sadare et al., 2021), and most of them examine examination performance rather than the models of reasoning that students use. This study addresses these problems by assessing students' conceptual understanding of force and motion through models of response, and by examining the influence of gender and school location on it.

1.3 Purpose of the Study

The main purpose of the study is to ascertain whether a relationship exists between each of scientific explanation of phenomenon, imagination and concept formation, and students' understanding of physics concepts, with understanding assessed through force and motion. Specifically, the study determines:

1. students' propensity to use the Newtonian, Aristotelian or impetus model in responding to force and motion concepts;
2. the propensity of the test items to elicit a particular response model to force and motion concepts;
3. the influence of gender on students' conceptual understanding of force and motion; and
4. the influence of school location on students' conceptual understanding of force and motion.

1.4 Research Questions

The following research questions guided the study:

1. What is the students' propensity to use the Newtonian, Aristotelian or impetus model in responding to force and motion concepts?
2. What is the propensity of the items to elicit a particular response model to force and motion concepts?
3. What is the influence of gender on students' conceptual understanding of force and motion?
4. What is the influence of school location on students' conceptual understanding of force and motion?

1.5 Research Hypotheses

The following null hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance:

• HO1: Gender is not a significant factor in students' understanding of physics concepts (force and motion).
• HO2: School location is not a significant factor in students' understanding of physics concepts (force and motion).

1.6 Significance of the Study

The study is a conceptual assessment that supports the constructivist and cognitive view of learning, in which students build their own understanding by extending or changing the ideas they already hold. It also supports cooperative learning and an active role for the individual student. Its finding that students tend to be in a mixed state of mind when responding to force and motion questions adds to cognitive research on how conceptions develop. The findings will be useful to the following groups.

1. Physics teachers. Teachers will see that students' understanding passes through different models, so they can plan lessons and assessment that take account of the Newtonian, impetus and Aristotelian ways of thinking, instead of marking answers only as correct or incorrect.
2. Physics students. Students will learn that they may hold mixed ideas during learning, that some of their responses may follow the wrong direction, and that physics requires proper conceptualisation instead of rote learning or cramming.
3. Curriculum planners. Planners can use the findings to design curricula and teaching approaches that recognise the stages students pass through as they develop conceptual knowledge.
4. Other stakeholders. Those concerned with the influence of gender and school location on students' conceptual understanding will have empirical evidence from a conceptual assessment test.

References

Abamba, I. (2021). The effects of school location on students' academic achievement in senior secondary physics based on the 5E learning cycle in Delta State, Nigeria. LUMAT: International Journal on Math, Science and Technology Education, 9(1), 56–76. https://doi.org/10.31129/LUMAT.9.1.1371

Akanbi, A. O., Omosewo, E. O., Muhammed, R. E., & Anwo, A. O. (2016). Gender and school type as predictors of performance of senior secondary school physics students in Ilorin, Kwara State. Journal of Education in Developing Areas, 24(1), 33–41.

Bao, L., & Redish, E. F. (2006). Model analysis: Representing and assessing the dynamics of student learning. Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education Research, 2(1), Article 010103. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.2.010103

Docktor, J., & Heller, K. (2008). Gender differences in both Force Concept Inventory and introductory physics performance. AIP Conference Proceedings, 1064, 15–18.

Hestenes, D., Wells, M., & Swackhamer, G. (1992). Force concept inventory. The Physics Teacher, 30(3), 141–158.

Hilppö, J., Rajala, A., Zittoun, T., Kumpulainen, K., & Lipponen, L. (2016). Interactive dynamics of imagination in a science classroom. Frontline Learning Research, 4(4), 20–29. https://doi.org/10.14786/flr.v4i4.213

Özcan, Ö., & Bezen, S. (2016). Students' mental models about the relationship between force and velocity concepts. Journal of Baltic Science Education, 15(5), 630–641. https://doi.org/10.33225/jbse/16.15.630

Rittle-Johnson, B., Siegler, R. S., & Alibali, M. W. (2001). Developing conceptual understanding and procedural skill in mathematics: An iterative process. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(2), 346–362.

Sadare, O. F., Dhurumraj, T., & Mudau, A. V. (2021, July 27). The influence of location and gender on shaping student performance in physics [Oral presentation]. SAIP2021, South African Institute of Physics.

Thornton, R. K., & Sokoloff, D. R. (1998). Assessing student learning of Newton's laws: The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation and the evaluation of active learning laboratory and lecture curricula. American Journal of Physics, 66(4), 338–352.

Yeo, J., & Gilbert, J. K. (2022). Producing scientific explanations in physics—A multimodal account. Research in Science Education, 52(3), 819–852. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-021-10039-1