Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 20, Issue 1, Article 6 (Aug., 2019) Chengyuan CHEN, Wheijen CHANG, and Shihyin LIN Spiral teaching sequence and concept maps for facilitating conceptual reasoning of acceleration Contents Next

Spiral teaching sequence and concept maps for facilitating conceptual reasoning of acceleration

 

Chengyuan CHEN¹, Wheijen CHANG^2,*, and Shihyin LIN²

¹Taichung Municipal Wen-Hua Senior High School, 240 Ningxia Road, Xitun Dist., Taichung City 407, TAIWAN

²Physics Department, National Changhua University of Education, 1 Jin De Road, Changhua 500, TAIWAN

^*Corresponding Author's E-mail: wjnchang@gmail.com

Received 22 Jan., 2019
Revised 24 Aug., 2019

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Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Learning difficulties related to Acceleration
• Concept maps and cognitive load theory
• Instructional Design
• Methodology
• Results of Research
  • Student performance on the conceptual questions
  • Students’ evaluation of the teaching design
• Discussion
• Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
• References

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Abstract

This study involved a spiral teaching sequence on acceleration using four instructional strategies, namely: 1) preview of the core concepts, 2) a concept map, 3) conceptual questions, and 4) review of the solutions with a focus on the effective derivation routes and the prevalent difficulties that the students encountered. The participants were 402 grade 12 high school students. The results of this study reveal that the spiral teaching sequence, which introduced multiple stages of practicing and instructional explanation, was effective in terms of improving the students’ conceptual reasoning of acceleration. The review of the solutions was perceived by the participants as the most effective teaching strategy, followed by the concept map. We also found that conceptual questions involving a single concept were mostly easier to solve than those involving multiple concepts.

Keywords: spiral teaching sequence, concept map, acceleration