Diagnosis of misconceptions about force and motion held by first-year post-secondary students

Abstract

The present study aims to detect misconceptions in force and motion among Maltese post-secondary students aged 16-17. The revised version of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) originally designed by Hestenes, D., Wells, M., & Swackhamer, G. (1992) was used. A total of 395 students participated in the study by answering the FCI test at the beginning of their first-year and again at the end of the said year. Data were analysed by using a method used by Martín-Blas, T., Seidel L. & Serrano-Fernández A. (2010). In this study all of the known misconceptions given in the original paper by Hestenes, but modified by Bani-Salameh 2017, were examined. The dominant misconceptions from the students’ wrong answers for each of the 30 questions in the FCI were determined. A comparison of the dominant misconceptions held by the cohort studied in the pre- and post-test showed that a number of misconceptions persisted. This study reveals that the impetus, active force and action/reaction pairs misconceptions were the most problematic for the students. Only the pre- and post-test results for all students are reported in this study, leaving gender differences for future work.