How physics instruction impacts students' beliefs about learning physics
Faculty care about their students learning to think like physicists, but often don't assess this because it is not clear how to do so. Physics education researchers have created several surveys to assess one important aspect of thinking like a physicist: what students believe that learning physics is all about. In this meta-analysis, we synthesize the results of 24 studies using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) and the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) to answer several questions: (1) How does physics instruction impact beliefs of students? We find that in typical physics classes, these beliefs deteriorate or at best stay the same. There are a few types of interventions, including an explicit focus on model-building and/or developing expert-like beliefs that appear to lead to significant improvements in beliefs. However, because the available data oversamples certain types of classes, it is unclear whether these improvements are actually due to the interventions, or to the small class size, student population or level of incoming beliefs these classes. (2) When do physics majors develop expert-like beliefs? We find that physics majors enter their undergraduate education with more favorable beliefs than non-majors and these beliefs remain relatively stable throughout their undergraduate careers. Thus, typical physics courses appear to be selecting students that already have strong beliefs, rather than supporting students in developing strong beliefs. (3) How do beliefs of students impact their learning of physics? There is a small correlation between incoming beliefs about physics and gains on conceptual mechanics surveys. This suggests that students with more expert-like incoming beliefs may learn more in their physics courses, but this finding should be further explored and replicated.