Understanding first-year students’ curiosity and interest about physics—lessons learned from the HOPE project

Abstract

This paper focuses on results of an interview based survey of 1st year University physics students, carried out within the EU HOPE project (http://hopenetwork.eu/). 94 interviews conducted in 13 universities have been analysed to investigate the factors that inspire young people to study physics. In particular, the main motivational factor, which was proven to consist in personal interest and curiosity, was unfolded into different categories and detailed interest profiles were produced. The results are arguably useful to help the academic curriculum developers and teaching personnel in physics departments to provide guidance to students in developing and focusing their interest towards specific subfields and/or to design targeted recruitment and outreach initiatives.

Negotiating Intelligence, Nerdiness, and Status in Physics Master’s studies

“…Physics is a special choice, not something that every teenager is expected to strive for, and physics students are usually driven by curiosity and interest (Levrini et al 2017), if not a downright passion for understanding the universe. We have seen how being recognized as an interested or even nerdy student may be a way of finding a position removed from for example expectations of getting a Bgood job,^evidenced by the feeling of belonging when coming to physics reported by some of the interviewees.…”

“…Being passionate about understanding the big questions about the universe, solving deep mysteries, etc., corresponds to the stereotype of the genius super-physicist. Being passionate about producing new materials to solve the world's energy problems, like Eugenia, just does not meet that criterion, and is indeed a driving force for very few physics students (Levrini et al 2017). A society-oriented motivation for studying science is in general more common for women, but less common for physics students (Eccles 2007;Sax et al 2016;Schreiner 2006) and does not correspond to the ideal of the male genius-nerd who focuses on Bpure^physics as the most revered kind of physics.…”

“…A significant driving force for physics students seems to be a genuine and deep interest and fascination with physics, or more generally for understanding the universe (Bøe and Henriksen 2013;Levrini et al 2017). This fascination has been reported as something awakened already in childhood for many physicists who describe that they have Balways^wanted to do science (Maltese and Tai 2010).…”

“…Being recognized as a good physics student can mean not only displaying the right competence or intelligence but also showing the right kind of attachment to physics. In general, research shows that the decision to study physics is more often driven by an interest for the subject rather than a desire for getting a good job (Bøe and Henriksen 2013;Levrini et al 2017). Several of the interviewees' describe how they were more encouraged to go into engineering by parents or others, but how their choice of physics defied some of these expectations.…”

Activation of a critical attitude in prospective teachers: From research investigations to guidelines for teacher education

“…Among physics education researchers, critical thinking is universally deemed to be an essential component of the scientist's activity. However, what is highlighted in this register is most often that student scientists should criticize their own lines of reasoning or those expressed during a discussion between peers, with a special focus on what can be concluded from experiments [2,[34][35][36]. Here we consider the situation of an individual confronted by any textual or visual resource-a "Text" in what follows-designed by a person who presents herself as an expert whose explicit or implicit aim is to explain something.…”