Representation use and strategy choice in physics problem solving

In this paper, we examine student success on three variants of a test item given in different representational formats (verbal, pictorial, and graphical), with an isomorphic problem statement. We confirm results from recent papers where it is mentioned that physics students’ problem-solving competence can vary with representational format and that solutions can be triggered by particular details of the representation. Previous studies are complemented with a fine grained analysis of solution strategies. We find that students use different problem-solving strategies, depending on the representational format in which the problem is stated.

Figure 1

Verbal, graphical, and pictorial representation of original item [26].

Figure 2

Examples of student answers confusing the slope of the picture or graph with the velocity.

Figure 3

Verbal, pictorial, and graphical representation of second study.

Figure 4

Verbal, graphical, and pictorial representation of third study.

Figure 5

Student answer mistaking the $y(x)$ graph for a $y(t)$ graph.