Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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DD: Fachverband Didaktik der Physik
DD 12: Praktika und Experimente
DD 12.3: Talk
Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 11:25–11:45, SCH/A101
Students' reasoning in choosing measurement instruments in an introductory physics laboratory course — •Micol Alemani1, Karel Kok2, and Eva Philippaki3 — 1University of Potsdam — 2Humbold University of Berlin — 3King's College London
Recent research studies on laboratory courses highlight the importance of fostering students' experimental design skill and decision making. However, research on students reasoning about measurement apparatus remains sparse. To extend this line of inquiry, this study examines students' decision-making processes in choosing between simple measurement instruments in a laboratory context. We developed a short, 10 minutes, questionnaire answered by students at the University of Potsdam in a pre-/post-test setting. In the questionnaire students are asked to reason about the choice of simple instruments to measure the length of different objects. For the analysis of students' justifications we have inductively developed a coding manual and used it to characterise students' considerations regarding their choice of measurement instruments. In this talk, the questionnaire, the creation of the coding manual and the analysis of students' instrumental choices as well as the corresponding justifications will be presented and discussed. The results of this study contribute to the ongoing investigation of students' experimental skills and uncover possible misconceptions when working with instrumentation and measurement data.
Keywords: Praktikum; Messunsicherheiten; Messinstrumente