Exploring the causes of students' connecting errors induced in learning Boyle's law and Charles's law with multiple external representations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the causes of students' connecting errors induced in learning the Boyle's law and the Charles's law with multiple external representations. Fifteen seventh graders having connecting errors were selected and interviewed, and the interview transcripts were analyzed. On the basis of the results, the six causes of connecting errors were suggested, and were as follows; (1) misunderstanding on the particulate nature of matter, (2) inadequate understanding on the relationship of the pictorial elements, (3) mistranslation between the macroscopic and the microscopic external representations, (4) disagreement between the students' prior experiences and the teacher' intention about the pictorial elements, (5) pictorial representation with insufficient and simple informations, and (6) misunderstanding on the meaning of the scientific words in the texts. These results should be helpful in promoting students' understanding of the Boyle's law and the Charles's law by reducing their connecting errors induced in learning the concepts with multiple external representations.