A longitudinal study of the development of attitudes and beliefs towards physics

Laboratory courses represent a unique and potentially important component of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which can be designed to allow students to authentically engage with the process of experimental physics. Among other possible benefits, participation in these courses throughout the undergraduate physics curriculum presents an opportunity to develop students' understanding of the nature and importance of experimental physics within the discipline as a whole. Here, we present and compare both a longitudinal and pseudo-longitudinal analysis of students' responses to a research-based assessment targeting students' views about experimental physics -the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) -across multiple, required lab courses at a single institution. We find that, while pseudo-longitudinal averages showed increases in students' E-CLASS scores in each consecutive course, analysis of longitudinal data indicates that this increase was not driven by a cumulative impact of laboratory instruction. Rather, the increase was driven by a selection effect in which students who persisted into higher-level lab courses already had more expert-like beliefs, attitudes, and expectations than their peers when they started the lower-level courses.

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 47%

Improvement or selection? A longitudinal analysis of students’ views about experimental physics in their lab courses

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2017

“…[6] The authors of the CLASS have reported that the typical result for both the Personal Interest and Real World Connection clusters is a negative shift in favorable responses [6]. Negative results on these two clusters were reproduced in several other studies as well [8][9][10][11].…”

Section: Class -Personal Interest and Real World Connectionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…National policy recommendations for the integration of knowledge across the disciplines continue to position physics concepts and reasoning skills as being important and useful to degrees in STEM or careers in the health sciences [1,2]. Many undergraduate students pursuing a degree in STEM will be required to complete an introductory physics course [3], but research in Physics Education Research (PER) suggests that students do not share the belief that physics is relevant to them [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Operationalizing relevance in physics education: Using a systems view to expand our conception of making physics relevant

Nair

Sawtelle

2019

A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course. Multiple survey measures have attempted to measure shifts in students' beliefs on the relevance of physics but frequently the results show a negative shift in students' beliefs and are often reported as a failure of students to "see the relevance." We challenge this interpretation by first operationalizing relevance as a construct by using existing theories on beliefs and attitudes. We utilize ecological systems theory to identify rich sites of relevance in students lives and present evidence to demonstrate the rich ways students are able to make relevant connections to physics. We then reflect on the implications of this expanded view on the limitations of past measures of relevance. We articulate how incorporating students' disciplinary ideas and expertise into the classroom can challenge previous deficit-framed narratives of students' abilities to find the relevance of physics.

“…III for details). Although a few previous studies [13][14][15][16] have reported epistemological variations among college students or postgraduates, none provided empirical explanations to account for such variations. In the current study, we first used the quantitative survey of CLASS to identify changes, if any, in the participants' views, and then followed with interviews to seek underlying mechanisms behind such changes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…From the traditional philosophy stance, epistemological beliefs are referred to as one's understandings about the nature of knowledge and the nature of knowing [16,17]. However, in the broader context of sociology, psychology, and pedagogy there appears to be no clear consensus on what counts as a definition for this construct or what dimensions should be subsumed under this construct [17][18][19][20][21].…”

Section: Theoretical Framework a Epistemological Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making of epistemologically sophisticated physics teachers: A cross-sequential study of epistemological progression from preservice to in-service teachers

Ding

Zhang

2016

Previous literature on learners' epistemological beliefs about physics has almost exclusively focused on analysis of university classroom instruction and its effects on students' views. However, little is known about other populations or factors other than classroom instruction on learners' epistemologies. In this study, we used a cross-sequential method, combining both longitudinal and cross-sectional designs, to investigate an epistemological progression trend from preservice to in-service teachers. Six cohorts of participants were studied, who either were then attending or had completed an undergraduate teacher preparation program in physics at a major Chinese university. These cohorts were incoming freshmen, endof-year freshmen, end-of-year sophomores, end-of-year juniors, end-of-year seniors, and 1st-year high school physics teachers who were about to enter the 2nd year of teaching. We used the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) as both a pretest and a post-test to gauge the changes in the participants' epistemological views over an entire academic year. Follow-up interviews were also conducted to explore factors responsible for such changes. Results showed that the epistemological trend as measured by CLASS did not increase monotonically. Instead, there was a decrease in the epistemological trend among the incoming freshmen in their first year undergraduate studies, followed by a long stasis until the end of the senior year. Then, there was a rebound for the end-of-year seniors in their 1st year of teaching, followed by another plateau. Interviews revealed that the competitive learning environment, increased content difficulty, and unfamiliar pedagogies in college were major factors that negatively influenced incoming freshmen's views about physics. Conversely, a role change from student to teacher and relatively easy content in high school positively impacted end-of-year seniors' views about physics and learning.