Uncovering the Undergraduate Physiotherapy Students’ Conceptual Understanding Levels and Misconceptions of Simple Electric Circuits from 2018 to 2023

This study aimed to investigate undergraduate physiotherapy students' conceptual understanding levels of simple electric circuits and the misconceptions they brought to introductory physics courses, over five years, from 2018 to 2023. This retrospective study adopted an exploratory research methodology. Using purposive sampling, undergraduate students majoring in physiotherapy and rehabilitation and attending the Physics II course at a private university from 2018 to 2023 were selected as participants. In total, the results of the Simple Electric Circuit Diagnostic Test (SECDT) voluntarily taken by 296 students (209 females and 87 males) aged 18 to 22 were included in the study. The students' responses in the SECDT were analyzed using MS Excel and further analysis with IBM PASW18. The researcher calculated the frequency of each misconception category by adding up the students' responses to all questions related to that category. The independent samples Kruskal Wallis test with post-hoc analysis (pairwise comparisons) was conducted to determine whether student groups in different academic years were statistically different regarding SECDT scores. The results showed that students held five common misconceptions over five years: clashing current model, short circuit misconception, power supply as constant current source model, sequential reasoning, and local reasoning. Moreover, the study revealed a peak in 2021-2022 regarding students having better conceptual understanding levels than other years. Five-year data showed that minimal changes have occurred, and that prevalent misconceptions did not change over time. These findings can help educators when designing their courses, explicitly focusing on these misconceptions to promote a better conceptual understanding of electricity.