The sense attributed to physics concepts: the connotative dimension of conceptual learning analyzed from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory

Abstract

The sense of concepts, which extends beyond their definitions to encompass connotations and value judgments, is often neglected in the teaching of physics. Seeking to deepen the understanding of this dimension of learning, we investigated, in this study, the senses attributed to physics concepts. In particular, we chose to investigate the senses attributed to the model of Uniformly Accelerated Rectilinear Motion (MRUV) and the Notion of Conservation (NC) by seven students from an introductory Physics teaching course. We employed Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory as our theoretical framework, considering the attribution of sense as an intentional act, characteristic of human agency. As a methodological framework, we were inspired by the research of Franco et al. (2023), using self-regulation mechanisms to categorize students' responses to two questionnaires, and inferred the attributed senses through similarity analyses. Additionally, from data collected through interviews, we investigated the impacts of other dimensions of human agency — intentionality, forethought, and self-reflection — on the construction of such senses. We inferred two senses for each topic: in the case of the MRUV model, the senses differed in the degree of utility of this construct, while in the case of the NC, the senses differed in the degree of holistic value. We also found that the senses attributed by the students identified in the interviews tend to be more comprehensive than those inferred in the similarity analyses of the questionnaire responses, containing both salient and latent aspects. Furthermore, we identified that intentionality and forethought, two elements of human agency, strongly impact the elaboration of these senses, while self-reflection in different situations influences the way these senses are articulated by the students.