Schemes of common sense knowledge of Italian students and teachers were inferred from the answers to a paper-and-pencil test concerning real-life situations involving thermal phenomena. Concept maps drawn from the test show that the schemes are richer and less detached from the scientific framework than generally supposed. […]
Schemes of commonsense knowledge of Italian students and teachers have been inferred by analyzing the answer to a paper and pencil test whose items are centered about real life situations involving thermal phenomena. The analysis, performed by the use of concept maps, […]
In recent years work on students’ conceptions attracted the attention of people engaged in doing research on difficulties in learning physics. This paper shows that the origin of this kind of work can be traced back to a didactical programme starting many tears ago. […]
With good reason, physics education research has focussed almost exclusively on student difficulties and misconceptions. This work has been productive for curriculum development as well as in motivating the physics teaching community to examine and reconsider methods and assumptions, but it is limited in what it can tell us about student knowledge and learning. […]
Two easy experiments devised to help undergraduate students understand the concept of non-conservative fields are suggested. The idea is inspired by the early work of Faraday on the interactions between magnets and current carrying elements. In the first experiment two magnets rotate around a linear conductor; […]