Research studies that compared students who had not taken physics with those who have generally found
that the physics students had a higher percentage of correct (Newtonian) answers to questions about
gravity, although results were still well below teachers’ expectations. Although such studies are useful,
they do not reveal which teaching methods are effective or even promising, such as those reported in
Sections 4.3.3 and 4.3.4. All the learning studies involved activities with materials and discussions except
for Palmer and Flanagan (1997), whose treatment consisted of a short text reading that refuted common
misconceptions about motion.