Chapter 15
Freshman Engineering’ Reasoning
Strategies When Answering FCI Questions:
A Case Study
Onofrio R. Battaglia and Claudio Fazio
Abstract Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a questionnaire commonly used to
assess students’ conceptual understanding of Newtonian Mechanics. We show that
Cluster Analysis methods can be used to study student answers to FCI by finding
their reasoning strategies on Newtonian Mechanics. Our analysis is performed to
data obtained by a sample of freshman engineering students just at the beginning of
their first General Physics course. The analysis takes into account the decomposition
of the force concept into the conceptual dimensions suggested by test authors and
successive researches. We identified groups of students with similar answering
strategies, characterised by correct answers, as well as by non-correct answers
showing student misconceptions/nonnormative conceptions. Such answering strategies give insights into the relationships between the student force concepts and their
ability to describe and/or explain motions.
15.1 Introduction
Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test useful to evaluate the
efficacy of teaching approaches (Hake 1998) and to validate proposed learning
progressions on force and motion (Fulmer 2015). Some studies focused on students’
coherence when they answer FCI questions in different contexts (Bao and Redish
2006; Savinainen and Viiri 2008). Some authors (Bao et al. 2002; Bao and Redish
2006) used Model Analysis to analyse FCI students’ answers. A recent paper (Brewe
et al. 2016) has described a new methodology for carrying out network analysis on
answers to multiple-choice conceptual inventories. Moreover, studies using Factor
Analysis (Scott et al. 2012; Scott and Schumayer 2017; Semak et al. 2017) analysed
the possible conceptual associations made by students among FCI questions.
O. R. Battaglia (*) · C. Fazio
Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica—Emilio Segrè, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo,
Italy
e-mail: onofriorosario.battaglia@unipa.it; claudio.fazio@unipa.it
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
B. G. Sidharth et al. (eds.), Fundamental Physics and Physics Education Research,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52923-9_15
189
Freshman Engineering’ Reasoning
Strategies When Answering FCI Questions:
A Case Study
Onofrio R. Battaglia and Claudio Fazio
Abstract Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a questionnaire commonly used to
assess students’ conceptual understanding of Newtonian Mechanics. We show that
Cluster Analysis methods can be used to study student answers to FCI by finding
their reasoning strategies on Newtonian Mechanics. Our analysis is performed to
data obtained by a sample of freshman engineering students just at the beginning of
their first General Physics course. The analysis takes into account the decomposition
of the force concept into the conceptual dimensions suggested by test authors and
successive researches. We identified groups of students with similar answering
strategies, characterised by correct answers, as well as by non-correct answers
showing student misconceptions/nonnormative conceptions. Such answering strategies give insights into the relationships between the student force concepts and their
ability to describe and/or explain motions.
15.1 Introduction
Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test useful to evaluate the
efficacy of teaching approaches (Hake 1998) and to validate proposed learning
progressions on force and motion (Fulmer 2015). Some studies focused on students’
coherence when they answer FCI questions in different contexts (Bao and Redish
2006; Savinainen and Viiri 2008). Some authors (Bao et al. 2002; Bao and Redish
2006) used Model Analysis to analyse FCI students’ answers. A recent paper (Brewe
et al. 2016) has described a new methodology for carrying out network analysis on
answers to multiple-choice conceptual inventories. Moreover, studies using Factor
Analysis (Scott et al. 2012; Scott and Schumayer 2017; Semak et al. 2017) analysed
the possible conceptual associations made by students among FCI questions.
O. R. Battaglia (*) · C. Fazio
Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica—Emilio Segrè, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Palermo,
Italy
e-mail: onofriorosario.battaglia@unipa.it; claudio.fazio@unipa.it
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
B. G. Sidharth et al. (eds.), Fundamental Physics and Physics Education Research,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52923-9_15
189