The effectiveness of the Thai traditional teaching in the introductory physics course: A comparison with the US and Australian approaches

Abstract

In recent years, a substantial and growing body of research in physics education has been involved with identification of student misconceptions especially in the fundamental physics. Misconceptions are ideas or concepts that students have developed, based on their own experiences, which are often in conflict with the physics point of view. For example, many students believe that if an object is in motion, there must be a force acting on it. It is commonly accepted among researchers in this field that such students have failed to develop a Newtonian way of thinking about mechanics, which is the view held by the physics community. (A collection of the important papers in this field can be found in Pfundt and Duit (1994). Researchers have shown that misconceptions are widely shared, the same ones appearing again and again in different groups of students. They have also shown that traditional instruction is relatively ineffective in correcting these misconceptions or in helping students develop a more ‘appropriate’ way of thinking. (see for example, McDermott (1990)). In the last decade or so, much work has been done on developing special diagnostic tests to uncover misconceptions and to investigate students’ understanding of physics concepts — see for example, Hestenes (1998). These tests usually consist of multiple choice questions in which the correct answer is hidden among very attractive wrong answers. These wrong answers are, in fact, constructed from common misconceptions identified by earlier researchers. Among the best known of the physics tests in the area of dynamics and kinematics are: the Force Concept Inventory (Hestenes, Wells and Swackhamer, 1992); the Test for Understanding Graphs in Kinematics (Beichner, 1994); and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), designed by Sokoloff and Thornton (1998). Much effort within the Physics Education Research community has gone into evaluating these tests, both by themselves and in relation to one another (see for example, Huffman and Heller (1995)). Administration of these standardized tests to many groups of students (mostly within the USA) has led researchers to the conclusion that (1) in general, the understanding of concepts in mechanics by introductory physics students is quite poor, and (2) that this low level of understanding is not much improved by the standard teaching given in most universities — so long as the teaching is ‘traditional’, i.e. consists mainly of lectures and laboratories. On the other hand, where innovative teaching methods, usually referred to as ‘interactive-engagement’ methods, are used, considerable gains can be achieved. For a definitive review of all these findings see Hake (1998). The current authors are interested in whether these same general findings can be extrapolated to other cultures, or whether they are only really applicable within the USA. We focus attention on one of the above standardized tests, the FMCE, because the originators of that test have also developed a particular interactive-engagement teaching technique which targets the same concepts as the test addresses. Reports of the testing of their own students can be briefly summarized thus. (1) The great majority of these students entered a university without a correct, or Newtonian, point of view on kinematics and dynamics, and (2) after instruction by the new teaching method, some 80-Symposium Presentation UniServe Science Scholarly Inquiry Symposium Proceedings 32 90% of their students were able to complete the FMCE successfully (a much higher fraction than in parallel, traditionally taught classes). See Sokoloff and Thornton (1997) for details. Some teachers in other institutions have used the same methods and report similar results (Cummings et al., 1999).