Also published in Symposium Melitensia Vol. 15 (2019) p. 29-39The present study aims to detect misconceptions in force and motion among Maltese
post-secondary students aged 16-17. The revised version of the Force Concept
Inventory (FCI) originally designed by Hestenes, D., Wells, M., & Swackhamer, G.
(1992) was used. A total of 395 students participated in the study by answering
the FCI test at the beginning of their first-year and again at the end of the said
year. Data were analysed by using a method used by Martín-Blas, T., Seidel L. &
Serrano-Fernández A. (2010). In this study all of the known misconceptions given
in the original paper by Hestenes, but modified by Bani-Salameh 2017, were
examined. The dominant misconceptions from the students’ wrong answers for
each of the 30 questions in the FCI were determined. A comparison of the dominant
misconceptions held by the cohort studied in the pre- and post-test showed that
a number of misconceptions persisted. This study reveals that the impetus, active
force and action/reaction pairs misconceptions were the most problematic for the
students. Only the pre- and post-test results for all students are reported in this
study, leaving gender differences for future work.peer-reviewe
