Effects of two different types of physics learning on the results of CLASS test

Abstract

During a one-semester-long research project with high school students, we deployed and gauged efficiency of two different reform teaching methods: reading, presenting, and questioning (RPQ) and experimenting and discussion (ED). In this paper we report on changes in students’ attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning physics. We used the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS v3) to assess the relative effectiveness of the two methods. The data show that both methods improved student attitudes and beliefs but to different extents. The RPQ group (91 students) achieved an overall improvement of +5.8% in attitudes and beliefs, while the ED group (85 students) attained an improvement of +25.6%. These results suggest that both methods may have a substantial potential for improving students’ attitudes and beliefs about physics and physics learning, with the ED method being more promising than the RPQ. method