Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The present dissertation provides an overview of a study that has aimed at improving university students' learning of optics.In the dissertation, the study is divided into three sub-studies that cover students' learning of optics from different perspectives.The first sub-study focuses on students' understanding of the electromagnetic nature of light.It shows that instructed students often face a difficulty in applying the interrelations of the electric and magnetic fields in various contexts, including light.This result indicates a need to develop an instruction targeting to improve students' understanding of the interrelations of the electric and magnetic fields.To develop such instruction, the findings of sub-study 1 provide a useful starting point.The second sub-study covers the adoption of the Tutorials in Introductory Physics curriculum.The study introduces the tutorial intervention, that is, a fairly easy way to use the curriculum in a lecture hall setting.In addition, sub-study 2 provides evidence according to which the intervention improves students' learning of optics.Thus, it is argued that the tutorial intervention can be included as a useful supplement in a conventional lecture-based physics course.The third sub-study focuses on the context dependency of students' reasoning with regard to optics.It demonstrates how explicitly labelled light sources in optics task assignments may impact on students' reasoning regarding optics.Students' reasoning was found to correspond to the perceptible features of the light sources explicitly stated in optics task assignments.This type of student reasoning was often found to be inconsistent with the subject matter of optics, thus hindering students' learning of optics.To explain why students' reasoning corresponded to the perceptible features of the light sources, the Johnson-Laird mental model theory was adopted.When read through this theory, it seems obvious that the light sources trigger certain types of mental representations on the part of students.These representations mimic perceptible features of the light sources rather than their underlying subject matter of optics.The representations may explain why students' reasoning was found to correspond to perceptible features of the light sources rather than to the desired subject matter of optics.Finally, sub-study 3 demonstrates that the Johnson-Laird mental model theory is applicable in explaining the context dependency of students' reasoning of optics.We would contend that the theory would also be useful in explaining the context dependency of students' reasoning of physics in general.All three sub-studies were conducted in the course of 2009-2013 at the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the University of Eastern Finland.Both qualitative and quantitative data-gathering and -analysis methods have been employed by following the mixed methods study approach.The principles of content analysis research are applied in the analysis of students' responses.Overall, the findings of the present study can be used to improve students' learning of optics more globally than in the study context within which this study has been implemented.Thus, the findings of the present study provide a good starting point for the development of optics instruction.
Author: Mikko Kesonen
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3094738616