Abstract
We used the eye-tracking method to uncover students' approaches to solving the physics tasks with graph and text representations and their preferences of the representations during the solution process. Twenty-four upper secondary school students from Finland took part in the study.
Data collection was carried out in spring 2018 and the SMI RED250mobile equipment was used. Students took multiple-choice pre-test of their Newton's laws conceptions.
Based on the results, a sample of students was chosen so that we included students who were very successful, successful or unsuccessful in the test. The eye-tracking test consisted of four qualitative items related to Newton's 1st and 2nd law.
In every item, the stem was in text representation on the left side of the screen. The multiple-choice alternatives were presented in both the text and graph representations on the right so that students could freely focus on an option in whatever representation.
Short Likert scale questionnaire about graph - text preference was administered. Students were interviewed after the eye-tracking.
We found that students who preferred either text or graph representations watched the options differently but they used both representations to be sure of their solution. Moreover, typical misconceptions about motion and force were revealed.