Two Views on Students’ Elaboration of Free-Body Diagrams in Physics Classes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28976/1984-2686rbpec2023u241270Keywords:
scientific inscriptions, scientific representation, free-body diagram, educative experience, physics teachingAbstract
Free-body diagrams (FBD) are scientific inscriptions representing the forces acting on an object of interest. Research results indicate that the reading and elaboration of FBD is a challenging task. The objective of this study was to analyze the quality of FBD and the experiences of students that were constituted in the elaboration of these FBDs, as well as to compare the results of these two analyses. The study was conducted in a 10th-grade class at a federal vocational high school in Belo Horizonte. We analyzed data from two groups of four students, girls, and boys, aged between 15 and 17 years. Our results show that the quality of the students' DCL was only average, but, in most cases, their elaboration resulted in educational experiences. The quality of DCL does not predict the quality of student experiences.
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