Investigating the link between teachers’ use of representations and learners’ conceptual understanding of electrical circuits

Abstract

This study explores the link between teachers’ incorporation of representations into their conceptual teaching strategies and learners’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits. The aim of the research was to thoroughly investigate the link by determining whether learners used and applied the representations taught by teachers while thinking and reasoning about electric circuits. Three in-service teachers, two from Australia and one from South Africa, as well as the learners in their respective classes at the time of the research, agreed to participate in the study. Data was collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with teachers, examining their lesson planning documents, and administering a diagnostic test, which the researcher created specifically for this study. The goal of conducting interviews and examining lessons was to evaluate how well teachers used representations. The purpose of administering the diagnostic test was to evaluate learners’ knowledge. This study has shown that the use of different representations in electric circuits influences learners’ knowledge and understanding. Verily, the inadvertent misapplication of such representations can have a significant negative influence on their understanding and reasoning about electric circuits, leading to misconceptions. Furthermore, the study emphasised that learners frequently struggle to effectively distinguish between various concepts, especially those of current and voltage, during the learning process. This highlights the importance of teachers’ ongoing reflection and improvement in how they use and present representations during their teaching. The findings of this study could inform both preservice teacher education and in-service professional development, encouraging educators to carefully consider the strengths and weaknesses of the representations. Additionally, this study contributes to the existing body of knowledge on the influence of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge on learner outcomes and supports the concept-specific nature of pedagogical content knowledge.