Students’ views about the nature of experimental physics

Bethany R Wilcox,H J Lewandowski

doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.13.020110

Abstract

The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects of the field. However, while student learning within lecture courses has been the subject of extensive research, lab courses remain relatively under-studied. In particular, there is little, if any, data available that addresses the effectiveness of physics lab courses at encouraging students to recognize the nature and importance of experimental physics within the discipline as a whole. To address this gap, we present the first large-scale, national study ($N_{institutions}=75$ and $N_{students}=7167$) of undergraduate physics lab courses through analysis of students' responses to a research-validated assessment designed to investigate students' beliefs about the nature of experimental physics. We find that students often enter and leave physics lab courses with ideas about experimental physics as practiced in their courses that are inconsistent with the views of practicing experimental physicists, and this trend holds at both the introductory and upper-division levels. Despite this inconsistency, we find that both introductory and upper-division students are able to accurately predict the expert-like response even in cases where their views about experimentation in their lab courses disagree. These finding have implications for the recruitment, retention, and adequate preparation of students in physics.

Highlights

The discipline of physics is built on the interplay of theory and experiment
Beyond the work described here, there have been no large-scale investigations that characterize students’ views about the nature and importance of experimental physics as practiced in their lab courses or how these views compare to those of practicing physicists. This paper addresses this gap using a large data set of student responses to the researchbased, laboratory assessment known as E-CLASS (Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics) [22,23]
Students’ exposure to the theoretical grounding of physics comes primarily through numerous core lecture courses taken throughout their undergraduate careers; direct experiences with experimental physics are often limited to a few laboratory courses, or, for a subset, undergraduate research experiences

Summary

Introduction

The discipline of physics is built on the interplay of theory and experiment. Theory helps to give meaning to the results of experiments and guides new experimental directions. Experimental measurements test predictions of theoretical models and help to refine these models to push the frontiers of physics knowledge. It is impossible to truly understand physics without understanding the role of experimentation in building and supporting the body of physics knowledge. Undergraduate physics education programs acknowledge the importance of experimentation and require students to engage in the activity through instructional lab courses and undergraduate research. Unlike lecture courses on physics theory, student outcomes from lab courses remain largely unexplored by education researchers. As we work to better prepare our students for graduate school or future careers in our increasingly science- and technology-based world, we must better understand student learning within these experimental learning environments

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