Premium
Students' conceptions of the top‐level structure of physics texts
Author(s) -
Brincones Isabel,
Otero José
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
science education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.209
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1098-237X
pISSN - 0036-8326
DOI - 10.1002/sce.3730780205
Subject(s) - coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , mathematics education , task (project management) , philosophy of science , logical reasoning , level structure , computer science , epistemology , psychology , mathematics , theoretical computer science , philosophy , statistics , engineering , systems engineering , graph
The purpose of this article is to study students' use of the top‐level structure of physics text passages. An ordering task in which subjects had to arrange a fragmented passage was used to investigate the use of these structures. Students produced a high number of texts with top‐level structures that employed minimal organizational components, and had recourse to local coherence criteria to organize the text. Students also found difficulties in adequately describing the logical status of texts. Terms like “Deduction,” “Definition,” or “Proof,” are used incorrectly. An additional problem was the use of appropriate top‐level structures whose slots were incorrectly filled in. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.