Repeat a physics course more than once: A diagnosis of the most frequent misconceptions in newtonian mechanics of first and second-year engineering students

TL;DR

This study analyzes the persistence of misconceptions in Newtonian mechanics among engineering students across multiple physics courses, revealing that repeated attempts do not significantly reduce common misunderstandings.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that frequent misconceptions persist regardless of the number of attempts in physics courses.

Findings

No significant difference in misconceptions between first and multiple attempts

Misconceptions remain stable across different course levels

Repeated attempts do not effectively eliminate common misconceptions

Abstract

In this work, we study a sample of 600 engineering students in three consecutive physics courses of different levels, according to their curriculum. We focus on the most frequent students' misconceptions in newtonian mechanics. It was administered the FCI test at the beginning of the academic semester in each course. We use the taxonomy of misconceptions probed in the FCI test, and through this, we establish correlations between the number of attempts in each course, to explore if there are misconceptions that repeat in the students that are on more than one attempt-in each course. The data reported in this paper were analyzed using the method of dominant incorrect answers. The results show that there is no relevant difference between a student on his first attempt and a student on his third or more attempt, in each course, in terms of the most frequent misconceptions.