Force and motion misconceptions’ pliability, the case of Moroccan high school students

Abstract

This work investigates science major students’ misconceptions about “force and motion.” Stratified-convenience sampling method has been conducted on 232 Moroccan high school students. Using Force Concept Inventory (FCI), we examined all known misconceptions listed in the original article by Hestenes et al. (1992, Phys. Teach. 30, 141–151) and carefully highlighted the most dominant ones. Our study suggests that most Moroccan high school students do not have a “Newtonian understanding” about the concept of force and motion and carry a pre-Aristotelian conceptual understanding. Our results show that misconceptions about force and motion slightly decrease among students in upper grades. Nonetheless, no significant correlations were found pertaining to grade, age, or gender. We compare our findings to earlier works on the subject in Morocco as well as in other countries. The data and its analysis we provide in this work help to better understand students’ misconceptions and the reasoning behind them. They could serve as a guideline for developing appropriate didactic methods and tools to position and remediate students’ conceptions about force and motion. It could trigger further research on the subject and its implications.

Keywords:

• Conceptual understanding
• force and motion
• force concept inventory: misconceptions
• Newtonian mechanics
• traditional instructions