An Investigation On High School Students' Comprehension Of The Concept Of Elasticity

The present research shows that the students always try to combine the new knowledge with their original understanding in the process of learning scientific knowledge, and they seem to make"reasonable"judgment and explanations to the common phenomenon and the fact in the daily life. Since their judgment and explanations are constructed by themselves, it is difficult for them to give up or change their original mind. Educational psychologist Ausubel once proposed that"the most important factor affecting studying is what the learners have already known, and we should teach them according to their preconception."So it is essential to study how the students learn scientific concepts, and analyze the causes of producing preconceptions and the process of its developmental transformation. By doing this, we can design our teaching activities successfully, and also it can provide some valuable suggestions to the compilation of scientific teaching materials.Mechanics teaching is the key point in physics teaching in the entire high school years, Elasticity is the second kind which the high school students study according to the nature naming, and it is a key point of mechanics. Many teachers and students in high schools always complain about learning this point because of its difficulty, so it is necessary to let the students know how to understand the concept of Elasticity before study it.On the base of the previous researches, the present study aims to investigate the students'preconception before learning the knowledge of elasticity by using questionnaire and interview. The surveys found that an overwhelming majority (93%) of students in senior grade one could recognize the differences between force in physics and strength in life, but some students confused force with doing work, some had deviated understanding of the balance of force, some formed a variety of misunderstandings of elastic deformation together with the direction and size of elasticity because of the impact of common sense. After knowing about students'preconception, the writer thoroughly analyzed the causes. To sum up, the root causes of students'misunderstanding lie in the following aspects: 1. Students'superficial experience in daily life and one-sided ideas lead to an incorrect understanding of the concept of elasticity; 2. Lack of differentiation between concepts in physics and concepts in everyday life; 3. Students cannot understand the fundamental reasons for generation of force; 4. Students have incorrect comprehension of the force's effect; 5. Students cannot establish the correct representation for what they have learnt and systematize the knowledge. According to the outcomes of related surveys and study, the author discuss the strategies of conceptual transformation and put forward some proposals for the current teaching of physical concept, that is:when designing the teaching activities, teachers should learn about students'preconception at first, then use students'misconception as a starting point and fuse several strategies of conceptual transformation to design questions or create situations in order to arouse students'cognitive conflict.