• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.62-77
• /
• 1999

Idealization has an important role in the process of learning as well as in physics research. The purpose of this study was to survey students' and science teachers' recognition of the ideal conditions involved in the process of problem solving and of explaining the natural phenomena. The instrument for probing the understanding of the ideal conditions in the domains of force, electricity and heat was administered to general high and science high school students and science teachers. The framework of responses composed of three categories. The first category is "idealized conditions relevant to problem", the second "not relevant idealized conditions", which has more delicate subcategories of general/ irrelevant conditions, simple statement of formula/ law, repeating problems, uncorrect explaining/ describing conditions, and the last "no responses". The results of analysis showed that the majority of the subjects well understood the various ideal conditions, especially for science high school students. But some of them could not differentiate the ideal condition from the general conditions, or they simply repeat the problem situation or the formula. The understanding of idealization is different by the domains of physics. We discovered that the misconceptions about the ideal conditions in various physical phenomena and revealed some interconnection of researches in the fields of misconception and the ideal condition.