International analysis of students' knowledge structure coherence

This international comparison investigates students’ knowledge structure coherence in physics across five countries. In particular, this study investigates two possible hypotheses explaining the conflicting results obtained by Ioannides and Vosniadou (2002) and diSessa, Gillespie, and Esterly (2004) about students’ understandings of force in Greece and the United States. Ioannides and Vosniadou’s study in Greece demonstrated broad consistency in students’ understandings of force. diSessa and colleague’s quasi-replication in the U.S. demonstrated conflicting results supporting more elemental perspectives. One hypothesis focuses on differences in analytic methods. The other hypothesis focuses on semantic, cultural, or educational differences between the students in the two studies. The findings of this study suggest that differences in analytic methods do result in coding differences but that these relatively small differences would not account for the significant differences between the studies. This study, however, demonstrates significant differences for force meanings and knowledge structure coherence across the countries that might explain a larger percentage of the differences in findings between the studies.