Is There Something Useful In Students’ Mistakes? : A Cognitive Resources-Based Approach

The study reported analyzes the mistakes made by university physics students when solving two problems on geometrical optics and two on magnetism. It also offers other teaching contexts in which the same reasoning leading to these mistakes could lead to correct answers. Instructional implications are discussed on the basis of the results. The study is carried out using the concept of cognitive resources proposed by Redish (2004), Hammer, Elby, Scherr and Redish (2005), and Hammer (2004) in their theoretical framework. Results show that this construct is useful to characterize different kinds of “mistakes” made by students, and also that these mistakes can be regarded as a means of probing what students do know which in turn can be used to direct the design of useful learning environments