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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume
7, Issue 2, Article 8 (Dec., 2006) Tin-Lam TOH A survey on the teaching of relative velocity and
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3. Method
As the objective of this study was to obtain information on the general teaching of relative velocity in the mathematics curriculum and the pupils’ learning difficulties in this topic, a qualitative survey was carried out through a series of emails with seven teachers from five different secondary schools. Due to constraint of time and financial resources as this is not a funded research project, formal interviews were not conducted and replaced by a series of emails. As the sample size was small due to constraints of realities, it was not mathematically sound to perform inferential statistical analysis; only qualitative information was obtained.
In the first email with the participating teachers, they were asked to write down at least three of the problems that pupils normally encounter when learning relative velocity. The teachers’ responses to the learning difficulties on relative velocity were recorded. The second and subsequent emails were sent to the responding teachers.
In the subsequent emails, attempt was also used to find out on the following three items of the general teaching of relative velocity. The rationales why these areas were selected are discussed below each item.
1.the teaching materials used;
Rationale: I would like to see if the existing material from the textbook is sufficient for their teaching purposes.
2.whether scale drawing was taught or allowed in solving problems on relative velocity; and
Rationale: If the pupils’ learning difficulties were from the more basic hierarchy part (for example, difficulties lying in trigonometry or geometry and not direct relative velocity concepts), then this difficulty could have been reduced by allowing pupils to use scale drawing to solve problems on relative velocity.
3.whether any form of information technology, such Geometer’s to illustrate concepts of relative velocity was used.
Rationale: Some difficult concepts of relative velocity can be well understood by using technological illustrations, e.g. the angle for a boat to steer crossing a river with current flowing downstream to have the minimum displacement downstream (see Toh, 2003).
However, not all teachers responded the subsequent emails. We present the information based on all the feedback given in the subsequent emails. In section 4 below, we present the pupils’ learning difficulties in relative velocity; in section 5, we present some common phenomena on the teaching of relative velocity in schools.
