Exploring physics sensemaking among students across different academic years: Beliefs and practices

Abstract

Sensemaking is a critical aspect that enables students to integrate physics concepts into their deep and sustainable understanding. Without sensemaking, students find it difficult to apply this knowledge in real-life situations. Therefore, this study aims to explore physics sensemaking from both the belief and practice perspectives of different academic years as an initial and important step to improve the quality of physics learning. This study uses an explanatory sequential mixed-method design. Quantitative data were obtained from survey questionnaires, and qualitative data were obtained from semi-structured interviews. The subjects of this study were 226 physics education students. Quantitative data analysis used descriptive statistics, while qualitative data analysis used content analysis. The results reveal differences in physics sensemaking among first-, second-, and third-year students, with students becoming more proficient each year. The sensemaking constructs that emerged consist of belief in the calculation process, satisfaction through understanding phenomena, the importance of understanding formulas, attitudes toward the history of formulas, flexible approaches to problem solving, explicit physics thinking, and the association of information with existing knowledge. These results were supported by the first interview but not by the second interview. When students were presented with phenomena based on PhET acceleration simulations, the physics understanding of first-year students, where the sensemaking of “Student M1” occupied level 2, tended to be higher than the sensemaking of “Student H1,” who occupied level 1. The qualitative pattern was observed in the sensemaking of these students. The implications of this study reinforce that sensemaking can be supported through interventions in physics learning.