Mathematical Reasoning in Physics Tests - Requirements, Relations, Dependence

By analysing and expanding upon mathematical reasoning requirements in physics tests, thislicentiate thesis aims to contribute to the research studying how students’ knowledge in mathematicsinfluence their learning of physics. A sample of physics tests from the Swedish National Test Bank inPhysics was used as data, together with information of upper secondary students’ scores and gradeson the tests. First it was decided whether the tasks in the tests required mathematical reasoning at alland if they did, that reasoning was characterised. Further, the relation between students’ grades andmathematical reasoning requirements was examined. Another aim in this thesis is to try out if theMantel-Haenszel procedure is an appropriate statistical method to answer questions about if there isa dependence between students’ success on different physics tasks requiring different kinds ofmathematical reasoning. The results show that 75% of the tasks in the physics tests requiremathematical reasoning and that it is impossible to pass six out of eight tests without mathematicalreasoning. It is also revealed that it is uncommon that a student gets a higher grade than Passwithout solving tasks that require the student to come up with not already familiar solutions. It isconcluded that the Mantel-Haenszel procedure is sensitive to the number of students each teacheraccounts for. If there are not too few students, the procedure can be used. The outcome indicates thatthere is a dependence between success on tasks requiring different kinds of reasoning. It is more likelythat a student manages to solve a task that requires the produce of new reasoning if the student hassolved a task that is familiar from before