Interpretation of physics graphs by experts and novices followed by the eye-tracker

This thesis is focused on identifying key aspects of mechanics graphs regarded by students and experts. It also contains observations of student's attention focused on each graph. This data was collected using eye tracking camera. 23 high school students and 14 experts participated in this research. Our group of experts contained graduate and post-graduate students as well as researchers from faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University. Our results suggest that experts were able to memorize more information from each graph than high school students. Difference in focus on relevant parts of graphs was obvious from analyzing correct and incorrect answers of high school students and they consider axes and their labeling as the key parts of graphs in contrast to the students. Incorrectly answering students were more focused on parts with no relevance to the task in question. On the contrary, students with correct answers spent less time looking on non-relevant parts of graphs. Ideas of incorrectly answering students were mostly focused on wrong idea about graph as a sketch of real situation, or picture resembling physical situation