摘要：I report results of a study of representations of electric circuits and interpretation of circuit diagrams by students in a class for pre-service teachers and graduate students in science education. Students’ representations of circuits prior to instruction on the conventions of circuit diagrams were collected and catalogued according to representative characteristics and classified as either figural/iconic or abstract/symbolic or a mixture. As might be expected, prior experience with circuits was related to the level of abstraction in the ways students chose to represent circuits before standard circuit diagrams had been introduced in the course. Students’ native competence was also evident, however, as one student without prior experience developed her own abstract scheme for encoding information in circuit diagrams and continued to use it after conventional diagrams were introduced. Students were also interviewed as they interpreted non-standard and conventional circuit diagrams. The interviews revealed that previous experience with formal circuit diagrams, and the unstated but accepted conventions therein, led to difficulties in treating an existing circuit diagram as a completely abstract representation in one case, in contrast with expectations that experienced students would recognize circuit diagrams as complete abstractions. These results imply that students may be disadvantaged when conventional diagrams are simply presented as the norm, without explicit discussion of representation issues.
