Although prediction is claimed to be a prime function of mental models, to what extent students can run their mental models to make predictions of physical phenomena remains uncertain. The purpose of this study, therefore, was first to investigate 30 physics students' mental models of heat convection, and then to examine the relationship between…

In this paper, we discuss the first phase of a multiphase study aimed at investigating the dynamics of students' knowledge construction in the context of unfamiliar physical phenomenon--microscopic friction. The first phase of this study involved the investigation of the variations in students' mental models of microscopic friction. Clinical…

Our previous research showed that students' mental models of friction at the atomic level are significantly influenced by their macroscopic ideas. For most students, friction is due to the meshing of bumps and valleys and rubbing of atoms. The aforementioned results motivated us to further investigate how students can be helped to improve their…

This paper is the first part of a multiphase study examining students' mental models about the quantization of physical observables--light, energy, and angular momentum. Thirty-one second-year physics and physics education college students who were taking a modern physics course participated in the study. The qualitative analysis of data revealed…

The modeling instruction pedagogy for the teaching of physics has been proven to be quite effective at increasing the conceptual understanding and problem-solving abilities of students to a much greater extent than that of nonmodeling students. Little research has been conducted concerning the cognitive and metacognitive skills that modeling…