Conceptual Understanding in Fundamental and Mechanical Physics Among Pre-Service Physics Teachers of Surindra Rajabhat University: a Statistic and Machine Learning Analysis

Abstract

A study of conceptual understanding in fundamental and mechanical physics of pre-service physics teachers (PPTs) is a fundamental aspect that can improve the points of misunderstanding among students, including critical thinking (CR) and computational thinking (CO) skills. In this work, we analyzed 110 physics exam items, encompassing fundamental concepts, significant principles, units of measurement, vectors and their properties, one-dimensional motion, Newton's laws of motion, projectile motion, circular motion, and simple harmonic motion. To evaluate conceptual knowledge and identify correlations with the total physics score, we employed a machine learning approach involving five algorithms: random forest, logistic regression, support vector machine, naive Bayes, and K-nearest neighbor.  The following conclusions could be drawn regarding the conceptual understanding of PPTs. Overall, they still to develop knowledge of fundamental concepts, encompassing critical and computational thinking skills. The average combined score for all study subjects was 39.8%, indicating that their understanding was insufficient to be considered competitive for selection as specialized physics teachers in the civil service examination. We highlighted that GPA played a significant role in the mathematics subject in predicting the total score of the physics exam through the implementation of the random forest algorithm in ML. This algorithm achieved an accuracy of approximately 67.0%, surpassing the performance of other algorithms. Thus, the overall GPA, school size, and high school gender also influenced the overall scores. Our study highlighted the interconnectedness between the subject materials of fundamental and mechanical physics, revealing misconceptions that need to be addressed to enhance the performance of PPTs in competitive examinations, and provided the significance of calculation skills in influencing physics exam scores.