Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality

Newton’s third law is one of the most important concepts learned early in introductory mechanics courses; however, ample studies have documented a wide range of students’ misconceptions and fragmented understandings of this concept that are difficult to change through traditional instruction. This r...

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Autores principales:	Lei Bao, Joseph C. Fritchman
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	American Physical Society 2021
Materias:	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Physics QC1-999
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/bff8f4e09bde46688fd925406cb3bc1d
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:bff8f4e09bde46688fd925406cb3bc1d2021-12-02T19:18:07ZKnowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.0201162469-9896https://doaj.org/article/bff8f4e09bde46688fd925406cb3bc1d2021-09-01T00:00:00Zhttp://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020116http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020116https://doaj.org/toc/2469-9896Newton’s third law is one of the most important concepts learned early in introductory mechanics courses; however, ample studies have documented a wide range of students’ misconceptions and fragmented understandings of this concept that are difficult to change through traditional instruction. This research develops a conceptual framework model to investigate students’ understanding of Newton’s third law through the knowledge integration perspective. The conceptual framework is established with a central idea emphasizing forces as quantitative measures of physical interactions instead of using the common action-reaction language. Guided by the conceptual framework, assessment and interview results reveal that students’ concepts of Newton’s third law are fragmented without deep understanding. Specifically, three main issues within students’ understanding have been identified: (i) students have a disconnect between time order of events and causal reasoning, (ii) students rely on a memorized equal-and-opposite rule to identify interaction forces, and (iii) students directly link action-reaction language to the belief in a causal relation between the interaction forces. The framework is then applied to develop a new instruction intervention that explicitly targets the central idea of Newton’s third law. Results from pre- and post-testing show that the intervention is effective in helping students develop more integrated understandings of Newton’s third law. Overall, this study shows the potential benefits of applying the conceptual framework method to model student knowledge structures and guide assessment and instruction for promoting knowledge integration and deep learning.Lei BaoJoseph C. FritchmanAmerican Physical SocietyarticleSpecial aspects of educationLC8-6691PhysicsQC1-999ENPhysical Review Physics Education Research, Vol 17, Iss 2, p 020116 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Physics QC1-999
spellingShingle	Special aspects of education LC8-6691 Physics QC1-999 Lei Bao Joseph C. Fritchman Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
description	Newton’s third law is one of the most important concepts learned early in introductory mechanics courses; however, ample studies have documented a wide range of students’ misconceptions and fragmented understandings of this concept that are difficult to change through traditional instruction. This research develops a conceptual framework model to investigate students’ understanding of Newton’s third law through the knowledge integration perspective. The conceptual framework is established with a central idea emphasizing forces as quantitative measures of physical interactions instead of using the common action-reaction language. Guided by the conceptual framework, assessment and interview results reveal that students’ concepts of Newton’s third law are fragmented without deep understanding. Specifically, three main issues within students’ understanding have been identified: (i) students have a disconnect between time order of events and causal reasoning, (ii) students rely on a memorized equal-and-opposite rule to identify interaction forces, and (iii) students directly link action-reaction language to the belief in a causal relation between the interaction forces. The framework is then applied to develop a new instruction intervention that explicitly targets the central idea of Newton’s third law. Results from pre- and post-testing show that the intervention is effective in helping students develop more integrated understandings of Newton’s third law. Overall, this study shows the potential benefits of applying the conceptual framework method to model student knowledge structures and guide assessment and instruction for promoting knowledge integration and deep learning.
format	article
author	Lei Bao Joseph C. Fritchman
author_facet	Lei Bao Joseph C. Fritchman
author_sort	Lei Bao
title	Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
title_short	Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
title_full	Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
title_fullStr	Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
title_full_unstemmed	Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
title_sort	knowledge integration in student learning of newton’s third law: addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality
publisher	American Physical Society
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/bff8f4e09bde46688fd925406cb3bc1d
work_keys_str_mv	AT leibao knowledgeintegrationinstudentlearningofnewtonsthirdlawaddressingtheactionreactionlanguageandtheimpliedcausality AT josephcfritchman knowledgeintegrationinstudentlearningofnewtonsthirdlawaddressingtheactionreactionlanguageandtheimpliedcausality
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Knowledge integration in student learning of Newton’s third law: Addressing the action-reaction language and the implied causality

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