Students’ understanding of direct current resistive electrical circuits

By Paula V. Engelhardt, R. Beichner. 2003

517 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Both high school and university students’ reasoning regarding direct current resistive electric circuits often differ from the accepted explanations. At present, there are no standard diagnostic tests on electric circuits. Two versions of a diagnostic instrument were developed, each consisting of 29 questions. The information provided by this test can provide instructors with a way of evaluating the progress and conceptual difficulties of their students. The analysis indicates that students, especially females, tend to hold multiple misconceptions, even after instruction. During interviews, the idea that the battery is a constant source of current was used most often in answering the questions. Students tended to focus on the current in solving problems and to confuse terms, often assigning the properties of current to voltage and/or resistance.

Subfields: Education, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4208b093334808f35b246f5cd37d6e48dd730fa3

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In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Development of a Three-Tier Test to Assess Misconceptions About Simple Electric Circuits (2010, background): “Also, three questions were added from the related literature (Engelhardt & Beichner, 2004; Fredette & Lochhead, 1980).”
Synthesis of Discipline-Based Education Research in Physics. (2014, background): “• TUG-K: Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics [13] • CSEM: Conceptual Survey in Electricity and Magnetism [16] • ECS: Energy Concepts Survey [409] • DIRECT: Determining and Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuits concept Test [410] • BEMA: Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment [411] • R-”
Connecting High School Physics Experiences, Outcome Expectations, Physics Identity, and Physics Career Choice: A Gender Study. (2010, unknown): “The focus on conceptual understanding is particularly important for females whoenterphysicsclasses withde ﬁ cits inconceptualunderstanding(Cavalloetal.,2004;Chambers&Andre, 1997; Engelhardt & Beichner, 2004), often due to lack of prior experience (Chambers & Andre, 1997).”
Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Science Self-Efficacy Beliefs and Science Content Knowledge (2016, background): “…Test (DIRECT), a concept inventory that assesses student difficulties and misconceptions regarding direct current resistive electric circuits (Engelhardt & Beichner, 2004); (2) Force Concept Inventory (FCI), a concept inventory designed 656 D. Menon, T. D. Sadler to detect students’ ideas…”