The influence of force misconceptions on engineering students’ performance in university introductory physics courses

Learning of physics becomes hard due, among other things, to the presence of misconceptions, i.e., ideas that students believe to be true but which are not scientifically correct. In this work, a reduced version of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was used to study the most common misconceptions ab...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ramos Tejada, M.M., Quesada Pérez, M., Peláez, J.A., Henares, J.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Jaén
Repositorio:RUJA. Repositorio Institucional de la Producción Científica de la Universidad de Jaén
OAI Identifier:oai:ruja.ujaen.es:10953/6917
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.55040/educa.v4i1.88
https://hdl.handle.net/10953/6917
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Misconceptions
Physics courses
Engineering students
37
Descripción
Sumario:Learning of physics becomes hard due, among other things, to the presence of misconceptions, i.e., ideas that students believe to be true but which are not scientifically correct. In this work, a reduced version of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was used to study the most common misconceptions about force among first-year industrial engineering students at the University of Jaen. The influence of these misconceptions on the students’ performance on physics exams has been investigated. Misconceptions have a significant influence on academic failure (75 per cent of students that drop out had an inventory score, prior the teaching program, below 40 per cent). But not all misconceptions seem to have the same impact on academic results. We have analyzed in detail the eight misconceptions that are present in more than 30 % of the students and only one of them seems to be relevant to students’ performance, whereas four of them do not appear to be influential.