Constraints of Frameworks Theory on the Concept of "Force and Motion" in College Students

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how college students who had studied Newton's law represented the concept of Force and Motion. Eighty-eight college juniors majoring in education were given a questionnaire concerning their knowledge of force and motion and the relation between force and motion by qualitative tasks. Analysis of their responses showed that over half of the students persisted in their ideas of designated forces on motive forces. It was suggested that these naive concepts of force were constructed by three factors: (a) knowledge of a specific mechanism, (b) mutual relationships between knowledge on force and motion, and (c) the explanatory framework. As was the case with dynamics by qualitative tasks, it appears that a framework theory of dynamics in which force is a property of objects might constrain the generation of naive concepts of force