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This thesis reports about Laotian students’ understanding of the concepts of mechanics, and students’ activities when solving physics problems in groups. Totally, more than 1,000 first year university students from three universities in Laos have been tested using two versions of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) over a period of three years. The Force Concept Inventory was developed in the USA to test students’ understanding of mechanics concepts. The contexts of some questions were unfamiliar for Laotian students and therefore another Laotian version was constructed. We found that Lao students obtained a low score on the FCI. The average scores of the post-test ranged from 21% to 26% over the three years. The introduction of the Laotian version resulted in just a small improvement of the score but it helped the students to read and understand the questions more quickly. It was difficult to perceive from the answers to the FCI if the students used alternative conceptions however, in video recordings it could be seen that some students did use well-known alternative conceptions. In many cases, students seemed to use their everyday life experiences to find the answers to the FCI questions instead of referring to physics concepts. Group discussions were introduced in tutorial sessions for first year students. There were two types of group discussions. In the first type 29 groups solved end-of-chapter problems and three groups were recorded. One group described the physics theory of the problem before they selected equations and successfully solved the problem. Students in this group were not afraid to raise disagreements; they asked questions and took turns answering them which resulted in a fruitful discussion. The other two groups made the major mistake of not considering that the object moved with constant speed. Students suggested equations to use without giving any arguments based on physics theory. Both groups got stuck and needed help from the teacher. It was f

This thesis reports about Laotian students’ understanding of the concepts of mechanics, and students’ activities when solving physics problems in groups. Totally, more than 1,000 first year university students from three universities in Laos have been tested using two versions of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) over a period of three years. The Force Concept Inventory was developed in the USA to test students’ understanding of mechanics concepts. The contexts of some questions were unfamiliar for Laotian students and therefore another Laotian version was constructed. We found that Lao students obtained a low score on the FCI. The average scores of the post-test ranged from 21% to 26% over the three years. The introduction of the Laotian version resulted in just a small improvement of the score but it helped the students to read and understand the questions more quickly. It was difficult to perceive from the answers to the FCI if the students used alternative conceptions however, in video recordings it could be seen that some students did use well-known alternative conceptions. In many cases, students seemed to use their everyday life experiences to find the answers to the FCI questions instead of referring to physics concepts. Group discussions were introduced in tutorial sessions for first year students. There were two types of group discussions. In the first type 29 groups solved end-of-chapter problems and three groups were recorded. One group described the physics theory of the problem before they selected equations and successfully solved the problem. Students in this group were not afraid to raise disagreements; they asked questions and took turns answering them which resulted in a fruitful discussion. The other two groups made the major mistake of not considering that the object moved with constant speed. Students suggested equations to use without giving any arguments based on physics theory. Both groups got stuck and needed help from the teacher. It was f