Investigation of High School Students' Graph Drawing Levels for Force and Motion

"Force and motion" is one of the subjects of physics classes that includes the most graphs. Enabling one to understand the relationship between variables, graphs have an important place in physics courses. A total of 209 11th grade students at an Anatolian High School participated in this study which was carried out to determine graphs drawing levels of high school students related to force and motion. A Graph Drawing Skill Form (GDSF) containing five open-ended questions was used as a data collection tool. In the analysis of students' graphs, an evaluation rubric was used, which was based on the scoring rubric designed by Tarakci (2016) with additional categories and criteria. To support the findings of the study, semi -structured interviews were carried out with 42 students (20% of the total). At the end of the study, it was determined that students had difficulty drawing the velocity-time, acceleration -time, and position-time graphs. Moreover, it was seen that students had errors and issues with naming the axis of graphs, writing down the data on the axis, creating a point, and drawing a curve graph. Based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that applications that require using more graphs should be part of the curriculum so that students have a better understanding of graphs used in physics. It is believed that using simulations or animations which present the graph, and the motion of the object simultaneously would be more effective in students' understanding of graphs in force and motion.