Epistemological beliefs, attitudes and conceptual understanding towards learning Physics among Physics education undergraduates

Abstract

This research is to study the epistemological beliefs, learning attitudes and conceptual understanding towards learning Physics among the first year and final year Physics Education undergraduates (N = 68) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for 2009/2010 session. This is a descriptive quantitative research. Data is collected by using two instruments, namely the Physics Epistemological Beliefs and Attitudes Test (PEBAT) and the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). In the pilot study, internal consistency (a = .790) and (a = .712) are found for the epistemological beliefs category and learning attitudes category respectively whereas the FCI has the reliability of .650. Collected data is analyzed by using SPSS version 16.0. The findings show that the mean scores obtained by the overall undergraduates in epistemological beliefs test and learning attitudes test are 69.05% and 72.10% respectively. The results indicate that generally the undergraduates hold high sophistication of epistemological beliefs and favorable attitudes in learning Physics. However, poor conceptual understanding due to misconceptions is detected among them as only one person (1.47%) of the total undergraduates is able to develop coherent understandings in Newtonian force concept (M = 24.47, SD = 11.18). Gender differences are detected in both epistemological beliefs and learning attitudes tests which are in favor of female undergraduates. The t-tests show that there are statistically significant differences in mean scores between first and final year undergraduates for epistemological beliefs as well as learning attitudes. Higher mean scores in both aspects are in favor of the final year undergraduates. Pearson correlations show that there are significant relationships between epistemological beliefs and conceptual understanding (r = .607, p < .01), between epistemological beliefs and learning attitudes (r = .563, p < .01) as well as between learning attitudes and conceptual understanding (r = .496, p < .01).