Abstract
We present results of a pseudolongitudinal study of attitudes and beliefs about physics from different cohort groups ranging from final-year high school students in the UK to physics faculty ($N=637$), using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) instrument. In terms of overall degree of expertlike thinking, we find little change in cohorts at different stages of their undergraduate degrees, with a flat profile of expertlike thinking across the years of an undergraduate degree. Significant differences in overall CLASS scores occur for cohorts across entry and exit points of the undergraduate program. At the entry boundary, our data for high school students provides strong evidence of a selection effect, with students who intend to major in physics at university displaying more expertlike views than those students who are merely studying the subject to final year in high school. A similar effect is suggested at the exit boundary but is not definitive.
Highlights
There is a solid body of research indicating that students’ attitudes towards and views about their subject, together with their conception of the nature of knowledge within the discipline, combine to form an epistemological standpoint that can influence their motivation and approaches they adopt towards study [1,2,3,4,5]
We deployed the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) instrument to a wide variety of different cohort groups, resulting in a snapshot of their views from which we can assemble a pseudolongitudinal, or cross-sectional, picture of the way expertlike views develop across various education levels
A similar methodology has been reported by Gire et al [13], looking at the differences in expertlike thinking between engineering and physics majors, and the changes in the latter over time
Summary
There is a solid body of research indicating that students’ attitudes towards and views about their subject, together with their conception of the nature of knowledge within the discipline, combine to form an epistemological standpoint that can influence their motivation and approaches they adopt towards study [1,2,3,4,5]. A number of assessment instruments have been developed to probe and assess the views, attitudes and beliefs of physics students These include the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS) questionnaire [7], the Views About Science Survey (VASS) [8], the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) [9], and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) [10,11]. Studies undertaken with these instruments have illustrated that the views of entrant undergraduates may be markedly different from those of experts in the discipline, and that these differences often become reinforced after a period of instruction.
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