Supplementing the Learning of Physics with the Focused Instruction of Graphicacy

Rees, Simon

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Supplementing the Learning of Physics with the Focused Instruction of Graphicacy

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Graphicacy, or proficiency in using and making graphs, is a useful skill in academia and industry. However, it has been shown in past research that high school students are not learning, or perhaps not understanding, how to read graphs— specifically kinematic graphs of displacement, velocity, and acceleration. My MQP project was based on this notion, and was an investigation into ways to help students become more proficient in graphicacy. I had the opportunity to teach physics at Leominster High School (LHS). The approach for the project was to teach the regular curriculum with a greater focus on graphing and graphing methods for solving physics problems. The results were measured with a pre and post test which assessed students’ confidence in graphing, their ability to graph kinematics scenarios, and their ability to draw conclusions from more complex graphs. Results of the posttest were better than the pretest in all categories. These results are promising and demonstrate that if teachers have a more focused instruction on graphicacy supplementary to their normal curriculum, student understanding of graphicacy itself may increase. Key vocabulary: graphicacy — The term "graphicacy" first appeared in 1965 as a way to broadly describe the use of visualizations as a house plan, farm layout, map of a village, etc. Over time its definition has narrowed; Wainer (1980) introduced the term "graphicacy" to mean the ability to read graphs, defining it as proficiency in understanding quantitative phenomena that are presented in a graphical way.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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