An examination of the beliefs about physics and learning physics among engineering students

• Autores: Juan C. Miranda, Tomás Rada
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 34, no. Extra 4, 2018, págs. 1427-1435
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • It has been suggested that the attitudes, beliefs and expectations of students about learning physics can impact the way theyperform in physics courses. Here, our aim is to understand the beliefs and attitudes of engineering students of an accreditedColombian university about physics and how physics should be taught in this context. Our research process includes thetranslation of a pre-existing survey, its subsequent validation in the Spanish language, and its application as a diagnostictest. This survey is based on CLASS, an instrument developed by researchers at the University of Colorado that consists of42 Likert-type questions. The results of this instrument, which is based on the expert-novice comparison technique, can bedistributed into eight categories relating to beliefs and attitudes about physics. We applied this survey to more than 700first-year students of engineering programs. Based on the student responses, we discuss the overall results and specificallyfocus on the three categories that had the lowest student favorability values compared to expert opinions—ConceptualConnections (47.1%), Problem Solving Sophistication (44.6%), and Applied Conceptual Understanding (36%). Ouroverall results (56.5%) are comparable to those obtained by surveying students in other countries and cultures with thesame test, such as USA (62%) and Saudi Arabia (55%). Furthermore, we highlight some of the answers of the students, andexamine the effects that their beliefs have on their attitude. Therefore, physics courses should be oriented or prepared insuch a way that students can strengthen their beliefs and attitudes. Strategies focused on developing high levels ofconfidence should be taken into account. Finally, we provide some recommendations of how physics teachers can promotea positive attitude among their students, such as classroom debates related to physics topics in order to help students todevelop their different perspectives about a specific issue or phenomenon, enforcing the idea that there is not only onecorrect way to reach a solution or solve a problem.