Abstract
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.
- Received 25 July 2011
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.020117
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Published by the American Physical Society