An Overview of Recent Research on Multiple Representations

In this paper we focus on some of the recent findings of the physics education research community in the area of multiple representations. The overlying trend with the research is how multiple representations help students learn concepts and skills and assist them in problem solving. Two trends developed from the latter are: how students use multiple representations when solving problems and how different representational formats affect student performance in problem solving. We show how our work relates to these trends and provide the reader with an overall synopsis of the findings related to the advantages and disadvantages of multiple representations for learning physics. © 2007 American Institute of Physics