Do our physics degrees create expert physicists?

Physics Education Research The University of Edinburgh

GIREP-EPEC, August 2011 - Jyväskylä, Finland

Do our physics degrees create expert physicists?

A longitudinal study using CLASS

K.A. Slaughter, S.P. Bates and R.K. Galloway

School of Physics and Astronomy The University of Edinburgh



In the next 20 minutes…

• Educational context of the study

• The CLASS instrument • “Normal” usage of the CLASS

• Longitudinal Project • Fully longitudinal study • Cross-sectional study • Comparison of the two methods

• Conclusions

• Future work



Educational Context

• School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

• Traditional research based university.

• Active PER group based within the School of Physics.

• 1st year taught in a reformed workshop style with increasingly traditional teaching styles at higher levels.

•  2 exit points to the degree program, Bachelors of Science or Master of Physics.



CLASS Survey

• Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey.

• Used Extensively in the US - studies emerging now from the rest of world.

• Examines attitudes towards study rather than content knowledge.

• Series of 42 attitudinal questions, compared to responses from expert physicists.

• Percentage of “expert-like” thinking. • Can calculate percentage “favorable” and “unfavorable”

• Extensively validated by the survey designers.



CLASS Survey

• Normally used pre and post a period of instruction.

• Key feature - student levels of expert-like decline after first year of university physics teaching (unless specifically targeted)

• Carried out studies with our 1st year cohort, 3 years of data collection - all record a drop in expert-like thinking after instruction.

• High levels of expert-like thinking recorded.

• Interesting features seen in the sub-cohorts of the class, majors/non-majors, male/female (Presented at GIREP-EPEC 2009).

• Inspired the question “What happens next?”



CLASS Survey

• Little work published on CLASS scores over time.

• Time involved in tracking the students - problem.

• We have started a study of our student attitudes as they progress through the degree program.

• 2 possible methods…..



Fully Longitudinal method

• Same cohort of students are surveyed as they progress through the degree program.

• Advantages • Can track individual students removing the need to make assumptions about the similarity of the cohort. • External factors don’t matter.

• Disadvantages • Time • Sample size getting smaller with each measurement



Fully Longitudinal method

N=35



Cross-sectional

• All data collected in the same academic year and inter year comparisons are drawn.

• First study of this type carried out by Gire et al.

• Advantages • Can be done without waiting for the cohort to progress • Not effected by N diminishing

• Disadvantages • Have to assume all cohorts are the same

• Can test this assumption using 3 years of 1st year data - no significant differences found in any of the data.



Cross-sectional method

N=625



Validation of methods

• Can use the fully longitudinal data to validate the cross-sectional method.

•  Data collected in fully longitudinal study compared to the corresponding years of data in the cross-sectional method.



Validation of methods

No significant difference found between methods for any of the three years.



Conclusions

• Students come in with high levels of expert-like thinking and remain high.

• Expert-like thinking appears to be flat during undergraduate study.

• Appear to be transitions at entry and exit points to an undergraduate degree.

• Results from the first three years of a fully-longitudinal study suggest a cross-sectional method is valid.



Future work

• Gender differences in the cohort.

• When are these expertise formed? • Study in high schools ongoing

• Final data collection spring 2012 • Correlation of CLASS scores to career destinations and final degree grades?



Thank you for your time.

[email protected] www.ph.ed.ac.uk/physics-education-research

References CLASS Design and Validation "A new instrument for measuring student beliefs about physics and learning physics: the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey." W. K. Adams, K. K. Perkins, N. Podolefsky, M. Dubson, N. D. Finkelstein and C. E. Wieman, Phys. Rev ST: Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 1, 010101 (2006).

First Year CLASS at the University of Edinburgh “The changes in attitudes and beliefs of first year physics undergraduates: A study using the CLASS survey” K.A.Slaughter, S.P. Bates and R.K. Galloway, International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education. Publication Pending (2011)

Cross-sectional Study using CLASS “Characterizing the epistemological development of physics majors” E. Gire, B. Jones and E. Price Phys. Rev ST: Phys. Educ. Res. 5, 010103 (2009).