The Complexity of Teaching and Learning Physics: The Case of the Force Concept
Abstract
Physics is intrinsically a complex subject. We review some of the results coming from researchers in physics education, who identified several common patterns in how pupils learn physics and how they differently apply the relative concepts when solving classroom problems with respect to dealing with everyday situations. As pointed out by some researches, a correct and fruitful approach to teaching physics should be based on a validated cognitive model of a student, which is however not still available. In this paper we propose to consider the origin of “intuitive physics” as due to the cognitive mapping of concept on the physical body (embodiment), which is particularly relevant for the concept of force, and also the role of the “knowledge illusion”, i.e., the undervaluation of the complexity of a concept that is perceived as “well known”. We profited of an existing extensive survey, based on the Force Concept Inventory, on first-year university students in scientific and technological disciplines by which we confirm previous findings and show that the non-Galilean concepts are not organized in a coherent structure. We also develop a conceptual model of cognitive conflicting structures in students, and extract, by stochastic optimization, a Boolean circuit mimicking the expected behavior of a “physics-aware” student.
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