As seen in Table 5, two components were detected. From these results, it becomes clear
that conceptual understanding is a separate aspect of knowledge that is different from the
knowledge acquired through the traditional curricular activities. The loadings on the first
component showed that examination results for these traditional activities (Electricity
Theory, Measuring Electricity, and Workplace Practice) are intimately tied together, and
largely belong to one and the same component. Scores on the procedural skills items, which
all involved calculating basic parameters, such as voltage, current, and resistance, also loaded
heavily on this first component. This component can therefore possibly be interpreted as a
kind of procedural domain understanding that allows students to perform procedures and to
solve computational problems. Conceptual understanding, which was measured by items
that all involved reasoning about the behavior of electrical circuits, loaded heavily on the
second component. The emergence of this second distinct component confirmed that conceptual understanding as we operationalized it in this study is a unique, separate element.