Abstract:

Physics learning fundamentally requires conceptualization (conceptual understanding) and problem-solving processes. The first refers to specifying and interpreting the meaning of a concept in its entire range of validity. The second concerns the flexible application of the concepts and principles of physics to find the solution to a problem. However, students think that all they need to know are the equations, select them, apply them, and replace data according to the context of the problem.

Therefore, the purpose of this study was to promote conceptual understanding to improve the performance of students from different engineering careers who are registered in a physics course offered by an Ecuadorian public university.

The participants were 70 students, aged between 18 and 20, who took the subject of Physics offered to students of an Ecuadorian public university. The instructional unit was Kinematics of the particle in one and two dimensions. The texts used in the course were the time spent on his teaching lasted 16 hours. The instruments were an assessment related to the unit taught. The procedure followed in this study was as follows:
(1) Explain the particle kinematics unit in one and two dimensions, both to the experimental and control group.
(2) Presenting the teaching of conceptual understanding only to the experimental group, the control group received the class in a traditional way.
(3) Administer the posttest test.

In this study the independent variable is two-level teaching with conceptual understanding and no conceptual understanding; the dependent variable is student performance. The study consisted of two groups: the experimental group and the control group. The applied statistical analysis is the Gosset test used to compare the means of two samples of the population when the means are known and independent and the variances are different.

The Gosset test indicates that there was a significant difference between the two groups (t x 3.07, df x 65 p x 0.0032). Therefore, the research hypothesis is accepted and the null hypothesis is rejected.

This study proved that those students who receive the teaching with conceptual understanding perform better and the results obtained support this hypothesis. In addition, students demonstrated a better problem-solving ability than the students in the control group.

This study has more practical value than theoretical and therefore its application in engineering career courses is recommended to emphasize conceptualization and problem solving. The most important part of this learning teaching strategy is that students learn how to solve problems by applying concepts and teachers improve their teaching because students better build knowledge by helping the process of self-regulation and the organization of knowledge.

Keywords:

Conceptual understanding, Concepts, Physics, Problem solving.