A Study In Grade One Students' Ability Of Multiple Representations

With the further development of physics educational research, itbecomes the hot topic how to improve students' ability of physicalsolving physics problems. Generally speaking, students can successfullysolve the problems which they have met and exercised before. However,when they meet with new physical situations, especially the realproblems unknown before, they don't know how to do. About How toimprove students' ability of solving problems, many researchers havedone a lot of works. The results show that "Problem representation" isthe key to solve problem. Representation includes both externalrepresentation and internal representation. Through internalrepresentation, we can learn about thinking process of students trackingwith problems, moreover, find out obstacles of solving problems.Knowing the relation between the form of external representation andlearner's cognizance, especially further research on "multiplerepresentation", is an important way to enhance ability of solvingproblem.From the view of psychology and physics education, this thesisanalyzes the research development of "problem representation"domestically and abroad, summarizes the form of multiple representationsin physics problems, defines the concept of the ability of multiplerepresentations, and tries to set up the theory framework of multiplerepresentations. On the basis, the test is designed to appraise and analyzestudents' ability of multiple representations. Statistics analysis shows it isvalid and reliable. Since it is a turning point for learning physics at grade1 of senior high school, and at this time subject ability of students begins to be on differentiation, the research on these students helps to developtheir potential, at the same time, it can make them have a better objectiveunderstanding of their own ability. So selecting 3 classes at grade one ofthe Affiliated High School of South China Normal University inGuangzhou, we make positive researches on their ability of multiplerepresentations.Results have been gotten as follows.①The level of their ability ofmultiple representations is generally not high.②There is goodcorrelation between their ability of multiple representations and ofsolving physics problem. The better their ability of the multiplerepresentations is, the stronger their ability of solving physics problem.③The students are used to solve problems by mathematic representation.They are not good at constructing and applying representation flexibly tosolve problem.④It is unbalanced in the development ability of students'different representation form. Generally they consider that mathematicrepresentation is easy to understand, graph and picture are the mostdifficult, and the word representation is more difficult than math. Thetest result is the same as students' self-assessment.⑤Graph and pictureplay an important part in improving students' ability of multiplerepresentations.⑥There is no sexual difference of the ability ofmultiple representations in this test.⑦Laboratorial teaching is good forimproving students' ability of multiple representations.Finally, based on measurement theory and assessment Frame of theability of multiple representations, there are several suggestions ofimproving the ability of solving physical problem from the thesis. Firstly,teachers should pay attention to inducing students to properly representproblems. Secondly, teachers should place emphasis on training studentson external representation on the basis of internal representation. Thirdly, try to improve traditional teaching strategy. Fourthly, through ability testof multiple representational, find out whether students make meaningfullearning and assess their level of physical thinking ability in some terms.Finally, physics teaching should be associated with laboratorial teaching.