Large-scale survey of Chinese precollege students’ epistemological beliefs about physics: A progression or a regression?

This paper reports a cross-grade comparative study of Chinese precollege students’ epistemological beliefs about physics by using the Colorado Learning Attitudes Survey about Sciences (CLASS). Our students of interest are middle and high schoolers taking traditional lecture-based physics as a mandatory science course each year from the 8th grade to the 12th grade in China. The original CLASS was translated into Mandarin through a rigorous transadaption process, and then it was administered as a pencil-and-paper in-class survey to a total of 1318 students across all the five grade levels (8–12). Our results showed that although in general student epistemological beliefs became less expertlike after receiving more years of traditional instruction (a trend consistent with what was reported in the previous literature), the cross-grade change was not a monotonous decrease. Instead, students at grades 9 and 12 showed a slight positive shift in their beliefs measured by CLASS. Particularly, when compared to the 8th graders, students at the 9th grade demonstrated a significant increase in their views about the conceptual nature of physics and problem-solving sophistication. We hypothesize that both pedagogical and nonpedagogical factors may have contributed to these positive changes. Our results cast light on the complex nature of the relationship between formal instruction and student epistemological beliefs.

Figure 1

Overall favorable percentages on CLASS for middle and high school students. Error bars indicate standard errors.

Figure 2

Student overall favorable percentages on CLASS across grade levels.

Figure 3

Student favorable percentages on eight CLASS categories across grade levels: (a) personal interest; (b) real world connection; (c) problem solving general; (d) problem solving confidence; (e) problem solving sophistication; (f) sense making; (g) conceptual understanding; and (h) applied conceptual understanding.