Detail Page

Physical Review Physics Education Research
written by Dehui Hu, Benjamin M. Zwickl, Bethany R. Wilcox, and H. J. Lewandowski
This study examines students' reasoning surrounding seemingly contradictory Likert-scale responses within five items in the Colorado Learning Attitudes About Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). We administered the E-CLASS with embedded open-ended prompts, which asked students to provide explanations after making a Likert-scale selection. The quantitative scores on those items showed that our sample of the 216 students enrolled in first year and beyond first year physics courses demonstrated the same trends as previous national data. A qualitative analysis of students' open-ended responses was used to examine common reasoning patterns related to particular Likert-scale responses. When explaining responses to items regarding the role of experiments in confirming known results and also contributing to the growth of scientific knowledge, a common reasoning pattern suggested that confirming known results in a classroom experiment can help with understanding concepts. Thus, physics experiments contribute to students' personal scientific knowledge growth, while also confirming widely known results. Many students agreed that having correct formatting and making well-reasoned conclusions are the main goal for communicating experimental results. Students who focused on sections and formatting emphasized how it enables clear and efficient communication. However, very few students discussed the link between well-reasoned conclusions and effective scientific communication. Lastly, many students argued it was possible to complete experiments without understanding equations and physics concepts. The most common justification was that they could simply follow instructions to finish the lab without understanding.
Physical Review Physics Education Research: Volume 13, Issue 11, Pages 020134
Subjects Levels Resource Types
Education Foundations
- Assessment
= Instruments
- Communication
= Writing
- Student Characteristics
= Affect
Education Practices
- Curriculum Development
= Laboratory
- Lower Undergraduate
- Upper Undergraduate
- Reference Material
= Article
Intended Users Formats Ratings
- Educators
- Researchers
- application/pdf
- text/html
  • Currently 0.0/5

Want to rate this material?
Login here!


Access Rights:
Free access
Restriction:
Does not have a copyright, license, or other use restriction.
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.13.020134
Record Creator:
Metadata instance created May 28, 2019 by Bruce Mason
Record Updated:
June 5, 2019 by Bruce Mason
Last Update
when Cataloged:
November 29, 2017
Other Collections:

Save to my folders

Contribute

Similar Materials