Imagery in Physics Learning - from Physicists’ Practice to Naive Students’ Understanding

The main issue in this chapter is imagery in physics learning. Three epistemological resources are used to address this issue: Imagery in the history of physics, cognitive science aspects of imagery, and educational research on physics learning with pictorial representations. A double analysis is used. The first analysis is focused on imagery in classical test cases in the history of physics, such as Faraday’s work on magnetism and Einstein’s thought experiments described in the 1905 papers. The categories identified in the first analysis were used for the second: analysis of imagery in naive students’ reasoning. In particular we describe a learning experiment, which examined naive students’ representations of magnetic phenomena, during hands-on activities in the physics laboratory. We show that naive students use imagery in making sense of the physical phenomena; that modes of naive students’ imagery resemble, on several levels cognitive mechanisms identified in physicists’ imagery strategies; and that the product of imagery, pictorial representations, mirror processes of changes in conceptual understanding. We conclude with suggestions and implications for physics learning.