TY - JOUR
T1 - The acquisition of qualitative physics knowledge during textbook-based physics training
AU - Ploetzner, Rolf
AU - VanLehn, Kurt
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and by the Cognitive Science division of the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-88-K-0086. We thank Jim Slotta for helping us with the exposition of the text and Micki Chi and her colleagues for giving us access to their data. Two anonymous reviewers provided many detailed comments that further helped to improve the text.
PY - 1997
Y1 - 1997
N2 - Several earlier investigations found that teaching standard textbook physics causes only moderate change in qualitative understanding. Many investigations have tried to explain why teaching textbook physics results in so little learning of qualitative physics. In contrast, we examined cases where learning did occur and tried to understand them, hoping that this might help us to understand how to support such learning. We developed computerized simulation models of both qualitative, conceptual problem solving and quantitative problem solving and used them to assess changes in students' qualitative knowledge as they learned textbook physics. In many cases, qualitative knowledge has been acquired on the basis of information explicitly presented in the textbook. We also found cases, however, where learning of qualitative physics took place on the basis of information only implicitly addressed in the instruction. Even more important, in various cases, this newly acquired qualitative knowledge led to a less frequent use of incorrect qualitative preknowledge. This suggests that successful students not only learn what has been explicitly presented in the instruction but also learn by deriving and constructing information left implicit in the instruction, relating this information to their preknowledge and possibly refining and modifying their preknowledge in those cases where conflicts became salient.
AB - Several earlier investigations found that teaching standard textbook physics causes only moderate change in qualitative understanding. Many investigations have tried to explain why teaching textbook physics results in so little learning of qualitative physics. In contrast, we examined cases where learning did occur and tried to understand them, hoping that this might help us to understand how to support such learning. We developed computerized simulation models of both qualitative, conceptual problem solving and quantitative problem solving and used them to assess changes in students' qualitative knowledge as they learned textbook physics. In many cases, qualitative knowledge has been acquired on the basis of information explicitly presented in the textbook. We also found cases, however, where learning of qualitative physics took place on the basis of information only implicitly addressed in the instruction. Even more important, in various cases, this newly acquired qualitative knowledge led to a less frequent use of incorrect qualitative preknowledge. This suggests that successful students not only learn what has been explicitly presented in the instruction but also learn by deriving and constructing information left implicit in the instruction, relating this information to their preknowledge and possibly refining and modifying their preknowledge in those cases where conflicts became salient.
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U2 - 10.1207/s1532690xci1502_2
DO - 10.1207/s1532690xci1502_2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0039382115
SN - 0737-0008
VL - 15
SP - 169
EP - 205
JO - Cognition and Instruction
JF - Cognition and Instruction
IS - 2
ER -