An Investigation Of Mental Models Of Concepts Related To Electromagnetic Induction Among Senior High School Students

A mental model is an individual’s internal representation of the external world,which reflects the individual’s understanding of things or phenomena and enables them to make predictions and inferences to make decisions and control their execution.In the actual learning process,students understand the concepts they have learned and can solve relevant problems with the information they already have.However,due to different knowledge experiences and teaching environments,there are differences in students’ ability to internalize these knowledge concepts and thus construct different mental models.These models may be scientific or may be flawed.Therefore,studying students’ mental models can help to understand some of their implicit psychological mechanisms and cognitive processes so that targeted instruction can be conducted to further adjust and correct students’ unscientific mental models."Electromagnetic induction" is one of the essential contents of high school physics.Still,its related knowledge concepts are abstract,complex,and logical,which is often difficult for senior high school students to learn.Therefore,this study uses concepts related to electromagnetic induction as a carrier and uses questionnaires and interviews to investigate the construction of students’ mental models so as to help teachers understand the types of mental models that senior high school students may hold in the process of learning concepts related to electromagnetic induction,accurately predict students’ deviations in dealing with related problems and adopt corresponding teaching strategies to optimize the teaching of physics concepts according to their needs.First of all,this paper reviews the relevant literature to understand the current status of research on "mental models" in physics education.This basis defines the concepts and sorts out the theoretical foundations involved.It then analyzes the content related to electromagnetic induction in senior high school physics curriculum standards and textbooks to select the knowledge concepts to study.After that,relevant questions were collected to compile a questionnaire according to knowledge concepts’ essential and difficult points.A test survey was conducted on 307 senior students from three senior high schools in Kaifeng.The test data were statistically analyzed using SPSS26.0 software to classify the three levels of A,B,and C of students’ mental models about concepts related to electromagnetic induction.Finally,the specific answers were analyzed by combining the two-paragraph answer rationale and interviews and finally summarized that there were 57 mental models of students about the concepts related to electromagnetic induction.On this basis,the types of mental models and their distribution characteristics of each level group were summarized.The findings of the study are as follows:(1)Multiple mental models exist for senior high school students after learning concepts related to electromagnetic induction.It is found that students have multiple mental models around "magnetic field","magnetic induction line","magnetic induction","magnetic flux","induced current","Lenz law","induced electric potential"," Faraday law of electromagnetic induction" and "self-inductance".There are 20 scientific models and 37 defective models.(2)Senior high school students’ mental models of concepts related to electromagnetic induction are implicit.Students sometimes reason correctly about a physical situation,their mental models may be flawed.(3)Senior high school students’ mental models of concepts related to electromagnetic induction are unstable.Students are likely to be influenced by other models when faced with similar problems and to appear confused and wavering.(4)Senior high school students’ mental models of concepts related to electromagnetic induction have variability.The differences are manifested in two aspects:(a)the number of types of mental models constructed by senior high school students at different levels differs;(b)the degree of consistency of mental models of high school students at different levels differs.Combined with the findings of the study,it is found that students of any ability level have defective models after learning the concepts related to electromagnetic induction,and there are many types of defective models.The analysis reveal that the factors that led to students’ deficient mental models might originate from the following three aspects:(1)the abstractness and complexity of the concepts themselves;(2)the influence of students’ prior knowledge and experience;(3)the influence of teachers’ teaching methods.Based on the analysis,the following teaching suggestions are made:(1)pay attention to experimental teaching to make abstract concepts concrete;(2)conduct comparative teaching to enhance students’ discriminative ability;(3)create different situations to trigger students’ cognitive conflicts;(4)focus on basic knowledge to improve students’ understanding of fundamental connotations;(5)give timely feedback to strengthen students’ scientific models.