Evaluation of Students’ Holistic Processing of Electric Circuits

Abstract

The objective of this study was to clarify a way of evaluating students’ holistic processing of electric circuits by using neural networks. Ninth grade students were asked to perform a holistic processing test and an analytic processing test. As a result of correlation analysis, there was no clear relationship between holistic processing and analytic processing. As a result of performing neural networks analysis, many students believed that the electric current increases when batteries are connected in series, but they didn’t believe that the electric current would increase when resistors are connected in parallel. In fact, many students believed that the electric current decreases whenever additional resistors are connected.