Students know what physicists believe , but they don ’ t agree : A study using the CLASS survey

We measured what students perceive physicists to believe about physics and solving physics problems and how those perceptions differ from the students’ personal beliefs. In this study, we used a modified version of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey which asked students to respond to each statement with both their personal belief and the response they thought a physicist would give. Students from three different types of university introductory physics courses were studied. Students who have not yet taken physics in college have a surprisingly accurate idea of what physicists believe about physics no matter what their high school background and what physics courses they choose to take in college. These ideas are largely unaffected by their college physics instruction. In contrast, students’ personal beliefs about physics differ with varying high school physics backgrounds and college physics courses in which they enroll, and these beliefs are affected by college physics instruction. Women have a larger difference between their reported personal beliefs and their perceptions of physicists’ beliefs than do men.


I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
][3][4] These references argue that student beliefs about physicsabout the structure of physics knowledge, the connection between physics and the real world, how to approach problem solving, and how to learn physics-play a substantial role in a student's ability to learn physics.Previous studies have used interviews to document and categorize students' beliefs in general 5 and about physics specifically. 6In addition, several surveys have been developed to study these beliefs and to document the effects of various curricula on these beliefs.These surveys include the Views About Science Survey ͑VASS͒, 7 the Maryland Physics Expectation ͑MPEX͒, 8 the Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Physical Science ͑EBAPS͒, 9 and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey ͑CLASS͒. 10tudies using these surveys in introductory college physics courses found that the population of students in these introductory courses has a wide range of beliefs about physics and learning physics, with many students having quite novice views. 8,10For example, novices view physics as a series of disconnected facts and algorithms presented by the professor ͑the authority͒ that must be memorized and have no connection to the real world.While it is often not a stated or explicit goal, most physics instructors would like for the students to develop views about the nature of physics as a discipline that reflect the instructor's expert view. 2 Despite this "hidden" goal, students' beliefs about physics and learning physics typically become more novicelike over of a standard introductory physics college course. 8,10,11Understanding the broad importance of these beliefs and how to change these beliefs through different teaching practices is an active area of research.Prior research shows that some beliefs are correlated with a students' level of interest in physics. 12,13In other work, 11 we have found correlations between students' beliefs and learning gains on standard conceptual surveys ͑e.g., the Force Concept Inventory 14 ͒ though further research is needed to understand the nature of any causal relationship.
Research has shown that students can hold seemingly contradictory ideas about physics and learning physics.Lising and Elby 6 introduced the idea that a student may believe one idea about studying physics for themselves ͑their personal epistemology͒, yet the same student may believe that a different and contradictory idea holds true for physicists or people in general ͑their public epistemology͒.Students may think that they cannot find coherence in their knowledge, but they would expect scientists to have coherence in their ideas.A similar phenomenon has been documented in student ideas about physics content.McCaskey et al. 15,16 asked students to complete the Force Concept Inventory ͑FCI͒ twice.The first time students were asked to simply answer the questions.The second time students were asked to indicate both which answer they believed and how they thought a physicist would answer.This study found variations between what students believed and what answer they thought a physicist would believe.
Extending the work of Lising and Elby, 6 our present study seeks to better understand students' beliefs about physics and learning physics by examining students' personal beliefs about physics and comparing those to what these same students think a physicist believes.It is valuable to know if novice students do not know what physicists believe about physics and learning physics or if they know what physicists believe but do not hold these beliefs themselves.Knowing which of these scenarios is actually the case helps inform and guide the teaching approaches needed for developing more expertlike beliefs in students.
In this paper, we focus on the following questions.͑1͒ Do students know what physicists believe about physics, the structure of physics knowledge, its connection to the real world, and how to approach problem solving and learning physics?
͑2͒ Do students' ideas about what physicists believe differ from their personal beliefs and are these ideas affected by college physics instruction?͑3͒ Do students' ideas about what physicists believe differ across student populations, e.g., variations in type of physics course in which they are enrolled, gender, or previous high school physics experience?
We investigated these questions using the CLASS survey in a modified format where students were asked to respond to each statement with their personal opinion and their opinion of what a physicist would believe.

II. METHODOLOGY
We used a modified-format version of the CLASS survey 10 to measure students' beliefs in three introductory physics courses representing a diverse population of students.Introductory courses were selected in an attempt to reach students who were taking their first college physics course, allowing us to measure their beliefs before any college physics instruction and then again at the end of this first term of physics.
The original CLASS survey measures student beliefs about physics and learning physics.The survey consists of 42 statements ͑see Appendix A for complete list of state-ments͒ in which students are asked to rate their agreement or disagreement using a five-point Likert scale.Each student's survey is scored by comparing the fraction of their responses that match the well-established expert response, 17 resulting in an "overall percentage favorable" score for each student.Individual statements are also evaluated by looking at the percentage of students who agree with the experts on that statement.For further details on scoring the CLASS see Appendix A and Ref. 10.
The modified CLASS survey used for this study contains the same 42 statements as the original and the same fivepoint Likert scale.However, on the modified survey, students are asked to answer each statement twice, first with their personal belief and then again with how they think a physicist would respond, as shown in Fig. 1.The survey instructions used in this study are provided in Appendix B. Student and course scores were calculated the same way as on the original CLASS survey, except each student or course had two scores-one "personal" score based on students' personal opinion and one "physicist" score based on how the students thought a physicist would respond.
For this study, a particularly important aspect of the CLASS survey is its focus on eliciting students' beliefs about physics in general, as opposed to their beliefs about a particular physics course.In the development of the CLASS, if a statement elicited a specific reference to the course as distinct from the discipline during validation interviews, it was rewritten.In the final set of interviews on the CLASS survey, student responses indicated that they were generally reflecting on their overall view of physics-explicit references to a specific course were infrequent.This design has important consequences for interpretation of the results of the survey.The "personal" responses to the CLASS survey are not directly a reflection of their views about the physics course in which they are enrolled but instead are primarily a reflection of students' overall personal beliefs, practices, and perspectives regarding physics and learning physics-shaped by some broader composite of their personal experiences and other pragmatic constraints ͑including physics courses͒.
The survey was given to students twice over the course of the semester.The pre-instruction ͑pre͒ survey was completed during the first week of classes, while the post-instruction ͑post͒ survey was completed the week before the last week of classes.Collecting student survey responses both pre and post allowed student beliefs to be studied before university physics instruction as well as to determine what effect, if any, the course had on their beliefs.Throughout the paper when comparisons are made between pre and post data, a matched data set is used which considers only students who responded to both the pre and post surveys.When results are considered for pre-instruction only, the responses from all students who submitted the pre survey are used to improve the representation of all the students in the courses.
Three different levels of introductory physics courses were surveyed during Fall 2005 covering a diverse population of students.Table I summarizes these populations.Physics I-Calc and Physics I-Alg are both first semester courses in a two-semester sequence of introductory physics, though each course serves a different population.Physics I-Calc is calculus based, goes into more depth than Physics I-Alg, and is taken by mostly physics and engineering majors.Physics I-Alg is algebra based and serves primarily biology and physiology majors with approximately 66% intending to attend some type of medical school.There is also a notable difference in the percentage of women in each course; the majority of students in Physics I-Alg are women, while the majority are men in Physics I-Calc.For most of the students enrolled in these courses, Physics I-Calc or Physics I-Alg is required for their major and/or career choice.Physics of Sound is a semester-long course for nonscience majors that covers waves and sound.It requires no previous physics experience though a small percentage ͑9%͒ of the students had taken a previous college-level physics course before enrolling.While Physics of Sound fulfilled a science requirement for most of the students enrolled, they chose it from many courses that satisfy this requirement.In all three courses, the students who took both pre and post surveys were comparable to the entire course based on course grade.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In Secs.III A through III D, we present and discuss the data collected in the three introductory physics courses.First, we compare students' ''personal'' and ''physicist'' scores, 1.A significant problem in learning physics is being able to memorize all the information I need to know.
Strongly Agree What do YOU think?What would a physicist say?Strongly Disagree 1 2 3 4 5 FIG.
1.An example statement from the modified version of the CLASS survey.Students are asked to express their personal opinion on each of the 42 statements ͑"personal" response͒ as well as their opinion of how a physicist would respond ͑"physicist" response͒.
analyzing how these scores differ among the three courses and how they change with one semester of college instruction.We identify the individual survey statements for which most students are aware of the "expert" response and those for which they are not.In addition, we identify the statements for which students' responses most often show a discrepancy between their ''personal'' and ''physicist'' views.We also explore the relationship between these scores and students' gender and previous physics experience.Finally, we discuss some possible explanations for these discrepancies that are emerging from some preliminary research into this question.

A. Students "personal" vs their "physicist" beliefs
The comparison of students' ''personal'' and ''physicist'' beliefs in Fig. 2 shows several notable features.
͑i͒ Students' ''physicist'' scores are much more expertlike than their ''personal'' scores, indicating that while students know fairly well what physicists believe about physics and learning physics, they do not agree with these ideas, at least as they apply to their own personal contact with the discipline of physics and what practices they follow in learning physics and solving physics problems.
͑ii͒ Although these three courses represent quite different student populations, with corresponding differences in ''personal'' beliefs, their ''physicist'' responses are all essentially the same, indicating that nearly all students start their college physics class with a good idea as to what physicists think about physics and learning physics.For comparison, the average overall percentage favorable score for the 66 U.S. college physics faculty who have taken the CLASS survey is 91.4%, with an overall percentage unfavorable score of 2.7% ͑see Appendix C for faculty scores on individual statements͒.
͑iii͒ Students' ''physicist'' scores are quite stable over the term, showing only small changes.The only statistically significant change in the ''physicist'' scores was in Physics I-Calc with the magnitude of the change being small ͑−2.2%Ϯ 0.9%, p = 0.014͒. 18Thus, in these courses, students' ideas about physicists' beliefs are affected little, if any, by a semester of instruction.In contrast, their ''personal'' beliefs are usually more significantly negatively affected as seen in Physics I-Calc ͑−6.9% Ϯ 0.9%͒ and prior work. 8,11y explicitly attending to students beliefs in the classroom, some instructors have been able to avoid this general regression in beliefs as seen in Physics I-Alg or, in some cases, achieve shifts toward expertlike beliefs. 4,11There is a large difference between ''personal'' and ''physicist'' scores for each course suggesting that, in responding to the basic CLASS survey, students are not just giving the answer they think the instructor would give."Personal" scores observed here are consistent with those obtained in these courses using CLASS in its standard single answer format. 19n each course, the students' individual ''personal'' and ''physicist'' scores vary widely from novice to expert.Figure 3 shows an example of the distribution of ''personal'' and ''physicist'' scores on the pre survey for Physics I-Alg.While the ''personal'' scores show a wide distribution, the ''physicist'' scores are grouped toward very expertlike with 60% of the students scoring better than 80% on overall percentage favorable.
While students are quite expertlike in their "physicist" responses for most of the statements, there are a few statements for which many students did not know the expert response.In Table II, we list the five statements with an average "physicist" score of less than 55% favorable on the pre survey.Statements 8 and 12 were especially novicelike with less than 35% of students correctly identifying the expert response in any of the classes.While there is no definitive link between the five statements, several of them appear to depend on greater knowledge about the discipline than other survey statements.The scores remained fairly constant from pre to post.
Analyzing individual statements gives a clearer picture of how students view physics and learning physics.Here we examine for which statements students do and do not "split."A student's response is considered a split when their "personal" response for a statement is different from their "physicist" responses for the same statement ͑e.g., "personal" ϭstrongly agree, "physicist"ϭneutral͒.As with previous scoring methods, for the purposes of defining a split strongly agree and agree are considered equivalent responses as are strongly disagree and disagree.
Figure 4 shows the statements with the most splitsdefined as more than 50% of the students split on these statements on the pre survey.Students generally have fairly novicelike "personal" beliefs for the statements with the most splits, although the three statements shown in Fig. 4 are not the statements with the most extreme novicelike "personal" beliefs.The statements with the most splits have a common subject-namely, how people personally relate to physicsand provide some insight into probable reasons for the measured differences between students' "personal" and "physicist" beliefs.
Figure 5 shows the statements for which the fewest students split on the pre survey.On average 29% of the students split on a given statement, while less than 15% of the students surveyed split on the statements shown in Fig. 5.The post results are very similar.We note that these statements with the fewest splits are those statements where the students' "personal" beliefs are most expertlike.Thus, the consistency between the "personal" and "physicist" responses is resulting from students agreeing with the expert rather than from students misjudging expert responses.

B. Influence of prior physics courses
To start addressing the question of what factors are related to students' beliefs about physics, we looked at their high school physics experience.The 5% of the students who have completed at least a semester of college physics were not included in this analysis.The following analysis looks at the most advanced course the students had completed in high school-no previous physics course, a regular high school

PHYS I-Calc PHYS I-Alg Phys of Sound
"physicist" "physicist" "physicist" "personal" "personal" "personal" Pre Scores for Individual Statements 25% 35% 45% 55% 65% 75% 85% 95% FIG. 4. Statements with the most splits-that is, where student's "personal" and "physicist" responses do not match.Only pre data are shown.More than 50% of the students surveyed split on these three statements.The "personal" ͑striped bars͒ and "physicist" ͑solid bars͒ percentage favorable scores for these statements show large differences.Figure 6 shows the average scores for each of the three surveyed courses broken down by the students' previous physics experience.What is most striking is how little correlation there is between the students' "physicist" responses and their high school physics experience compared to that evident in the "personal" beliefs.Except for the AP/IB group in Physics I-Calc, which has slightly more expert "physicist" responses, all other "physicist" responses are essentially identical.The "personal" beliefs show a much larger variation, with "personal" score correlating with both the choice of college course and high school physics course.Students choosing to take more advanced physics courses have more expertlike "personal" scores.It seems plausible based on our data on the impact of college physics courses that most, if not all, of these correlations are due to a selection effect.In this case, students are selecting their college and high school courses according to their personal beliefs rather than their high school physics courses changing their beliefs to be more expertlike.However further research is needed to establish a causal relationship.It is clear that students have a rather accurate understanding of physicists' beliefs even with widely different high school course experiences.

C. Women have larger splits
Previous studies have shown that gender plays a role in students' ideas about physics and learning physics; 10 it is therefore important to study if gender relates to students' ideas about what physicists believe.Figure 7 shows the gap ͑⌬͒ between "physicist" and "personal" pre scores ͑calcu-lated as "physicist" score-"personal" score͒ for each gender.Since Sec.III A has shown the importance of the current course on student beliefs, this section will continue to separate students by their course.Research on the original CLASS survey shows that men generally have more expertlike ''personal'' beliefs than women 10 and that trend is also evident here, though the difference in the overall score is more modest than in particular categories of beliefs.The "physicist" data show that women have a slightly better perception of what physicists believe, with the difference being statistically significant for Physics I-Calc ͑p = 0.004͒ and marginally different for Physics I-Alg ͑p = 0.04͒. 20As a result, women have a larger gap ͑⌬͒ between their "physicist" scores and their "personal" scores than their male classmates; comparison of the gap data for the three courses shows that the gaps for men and women are statistically significantly different for Physics I-Calc ͑p Ͻ 0.001͒ and for Physics I-Alg ͑p = 0.002͒, while being marginally different for Physics of Sound ͑p = 0.022͒. 20,21This difference suggests that although women know what physicists believe somewhat better than men, they see those beliefs as having less validity for themselves.
Figure 8 shows the pre responses of the Physics I-Alg men and women on the 36 individual statements that are scored, ordered by the women's "physicist" scores.From this data, we examine the individual statement gaps for both women and men to determine the source of the larger overall gap observed for women in Fig. 7.The women's gap for a particular statement would, for example, be calculated as the percentage of women who agreed with the expert when responding for their "physicist" view minus the percentage of women who agreed with the expert when responding for their "personal" view.Figure 9 shows how the gap between women's "physicist" and "personal" scores compares to the men's gap by statement.Based on these data, the gender difference in the overall gaps represented in Fig. 7 is not due to large differences on a few questions but rather due to Overall % Favorable Score (Pre) "personal" "physicist" "personal" "physicist" 17.9 + 1.4  small to modest differences on many questions.Women have a larger gap between their "physicist" and "personal" scores ͑a value greater than zero in Fig. 9͒ on 78% of the scored statements.Six of the seven statements that had gap differences greater than +10% had men's "personal" scores that were notably more expertlike than the women's "personal" scores, while the "physicist" scores were comparable across gender.These six statements ͑statements 3, 5, 14, 25, 34, and 40͒ all dealt with either the student's interest in physics or the student's confidence in his or her problem solving abilities.Thus, for the statements with the largest differences in the gaps, the gaps are due to differences in men's and women's "personal" responses and not their "physicist" responses.For many of the other statements, where the differences are smaller, the differences in the gaps are due to gender differences in both the "physicist" and "personal" views as reflected in Fig. 7.

D. Possible reasons for the splits
While establishing the reasons that students see physicist beliefs as not applying to themselves is beyond the scope of this work, there are some plausible explanations that have emerged from interviews conducted during the validity testing of the CLASS survey and from a few preliminary interviews connected with this study.It appears that the most prominent reasons for students splitting on their responses are ͑1͒ believing that physicists would inherently be more interested in physics and aware of physics phenomena, otherwise they would not have gone into the profession, ͑2͒ seeing that the greater experience and expertise of physicists would influence their abilities and beliefs, and ͑3͒ believing that the kinds of physics problems that students see are less authentic and therefore are perceived differently and approached differently than the sorts of problems a physicist faces, which are seen as being more in depth, involving harder problems, not requiring memorization, and putting more at stake than the student's homework problems.Other reasons expressed in these preliminary interviews include statements reflecting what students see as most sensible for their personal situation: students saying they are lazy ͑their words͒ in their approaches to problem solving compared to physicists; students saying that while they want to or should take the more expertlike approach, in reality they do not because they do not have the time or need; and students believing physicists, or other people in general, may have a 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%  -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% (Women's gap-Men's gap) # of statements FIG. 9. Difference between women's and men's gaps for individual statements for the Physics I-Alg course.For many statements, the gap between women's "physicist" and "personal" pre scores is slightly larger than the gap between men's "physicist" and "personal" pre scores.
different approach to learning than themselves but not wanting to assume what approach that would be.Additional research is needed to definitively establish the reasons for the differences between students' "personal" and "physicist" responses and to further explore the gender differences observed in the current study.

IV. CONCLUSION
In our comparison of students' "personal" and "physicist" scores on the CLASS survey, we find that most students with novice beliefs about physics and learning physics are, in fact, quite aware of what physicists believe about physics and learning physics; they just do not believe that these ideas are valid, relevant, or useful for themselves.Women showed a larger gap between their "physicist" scores and their "personal" scores compared to men in the same course.This gap suggests that while women are better at identifying what ideas physicists believe, they are less inclined to feel that these ideas are valid or relevant for their experiences.
Remarkably, students' "physicist" beliefs are quite consistent across populations and different high school physics experiences.In contrast, "personal" beliefs differ by choice of college physics course and previous high school physics experience.Course instruction is seen to affect students' "personal" beliefs, but it has relatively little impact on students' "physicist" beliefs.
These data indicate that students' formal and informal educational experiences are failing to provide experiences in which expertlike beliefs are useful, relevant, or necessary.The implication and challenge for instruction is that, in order to achieve more expertlike beliefs in students, the instructor should concentrate on finding ways-through teaching practices or curriculum design-that go well beyond telling students about how experts view physics and focus on making adoption of expertlike views truly useful and relevant for students.

CLASS scoring
Out of 42 statements, 36 are included in the "overall" score.Of the other six statements, two have been slated for revision ͑statements 7 and 41͒, three statements are learning style questions ͑statements 4, 9, and 33͒ and therefore do not have a consistent expert response, and one statement is used to find students who are not taking the survey seriously ͑statement 31͒.Each of the 36 scored statements has an expert response which was developed from interviews and surveys with physics professors ͑see statement list below͒.Each student receives an "overall percentage favorable" score based on the percentage of statements for which their response agreed with the expert response ͑strongly agree and agree are combined for the purpose of scoring as are strongly disagree and disagree͒.A "percentage unfavorable" score is also calculated for each student as the percentage of statements for which the student disagreed with the expert response.Since a student can choose to be neutral on some statements, the percentage favorable and the percentage unfavorable do not necessarily add to 100%.Course or other group scores are calculated by averaging over the scores of the students in that group.The introductory instructions to the CLASS survey used in this study were as follows.On the student survey all italicized text below was actually bolded.

CLASS statements and expert responses
Here are a number of statements that may or may not describe your beliefs about learning physics.You are first asked to rate each statement according to your beliefs by selecting a number between 1 and 5 where the numbers mean the following: ͑1͒ strongly disagree, ͑2͒ disagree, ͑3͒ neutral, ͑4͒ agree, and ͑5͒ strongly agree.
Choose one of the above five choices that best expresses your feeling about the statement.Then, please select the choice that you think a physicist would give.If you do not understand a statement, leave it blank.If you have no strong opinion or think a physicist would have no strong opinion, choose 3.
We are asking that you express your own beliefs.Your answers will not affect your grade.Your instructor will never see your individual answers only whether you participated and the class results as a whole.This information will be very helpful to us in an effort to design more effective physics courses.

APPENDIX C: FACULTY RESPONSES
FIG. 2. CLASS overall percentage favorable scores by course.For each of the three courses surveyed, the average overall percentage favorable "personal" scores-what the students believe about physics-are significantly lower than the "physicist" scores-what the students think a physicist believes about physics-for both pre and post.

%
of Students Who "Split" 36.There are times I solve a physics problem more than one way to help my understanding.

10 .FIG. 5 .
FIG.5.Statements with the fewest splits in the pre responses.Less than 15% of the students surveyed split on these statements."Personal" ͑striped bars͒ and "physicist" ͑solid bars͒ percentage favorable scores for these statements show differences of 5% on average.

FIG. 6 .
FIG. 6. Pre CLASS scores by previous and current physics courses.Error bars represent plus and minus one standard error of the mean.

FIG. 7 .
FIG. 7. "Personal" ͑striped bars͒ and "physicist" ͑solid bars͒ pre scores by gender and current course.Error bars indicate the standard error on the mean.Note the change in scale.a Average of the difference ͑᭝͒ between "personal" and "physicists" pre scores for each student in that group and Ϯ one standard error on the average.

TABLE I .
Demographic information for courses surveyed.The number of "matched" students surveyed includes only those who took both the pre and post surveys.Gender and previous physics experience are based on the percentage of students completing the pre survey.Advanced placement or international baccalaureate physics class in high school.
a Since the demographic information is self-reported and was not required, numbers may not total to 100%.b Students are listed only under their most advanced physics course.c d Regular high school physics course.e FIG. 3. "Personal" and "physicist" score distributions for Physics I-Alg pre.

TABLE II .
Statements with the most novicelike "physicist" scores.
a Percentage of students in each class who agreed with the expert response for that statement.b Percentage of the 66 U.S. university and college faculty who agreed with the expert response for this statement ͑see Appendix B for the faculty responses for other statements͒.c This statement has the lowest consistency among experts of the scored statements-63% disagree and 28% choose neutral.The average percentage of neutral responses for the scored statements is 6%.
1.A significant problem in learning physics is being able to memorize all the information I need to know.͑Disagree͒ 2. When I am solving a physics problem, I try to decide what would be a reasonable value for the answer.͑Agree͒ 3. I think about the physics I experience in everyday life.͑Agree͒ *4.It is useful for me to do lots and lots of problems when learning physics. 5.After I study a topic in physics and feel that I understand it, I have difficulty solving problems on the same topic.Nearly everyone is capable of understanding physics if they work at it.͑Agree͒ 17.Understanding physics basically means being able to recall something you have read or been shown.͑Disagree͒ 18.There could be two different correct values for the answer to a physics problem if I use two different approaches.͑Disagree͒ 19.To understand physics I discuss it with friends and other students.͑Agree͒ 20.I do not spend more than 5 min stuck on a physics problem before giving up or seeking help from someone else.͑Disagree͒ 21.If I do not remember a particular equation needed to solve a problem on an exam, there is nothing much I can do ͑legally͒ to come up with it.͑Disagree͒ 22.If I want to apply a method used for solving one physics problem to another problem, the problems must involve very similar situations.͑Disagree͒ 23.In doing a physics problem, if my calculation gives a result very different from what I had expect, I had trust the calculation rather than going back through the problem.͑Dis-agree͒ 24.In physics, it is important for me to make sense out of formulas before I can use them correctly.͑Agree͒ 25.I enjoy solving physics problems.͑Agree͒ 26.In physics, mathematical formulas express meaningful relationships among measurable quantities.͑Agree͒ 27.It is important for the government to approve new scientific ideas before they can be widely accepted.͑Dis-agree͒ 28.Learning physics changes my ideas about how the world works.͑Agree͒ 29.To learn physics, I only need to memorize solutions to sample problems.͑Disagree͒ 30.Reasoning skills used to understand physics can be helpful to me in my everyday life.͑Agree͒ *31.We use this statement to discard the survey of people who are not reading the questions.Please select agree ͑not strongly agree͒ for this question to preserve your answers.32.Spending a lot of time understanding where formulas come from is a waste of time.͑Disagree͒ *33.I find carefully analyzing only a few problems in detail is a good way for me to learn physics.34.I can usually figure out a way to solve physics problems.͑Agree͒ 35.The subject of physics has little relation to what I experience in the real world.͑Disagree͒ 36.There are times I solve a physics problem more than one way to help my understanding.͑Agree͒ 37. To understand physics, I sometimes think about my personal experiences and relate them to the topic being analyzed.͑Agree͒ 38.It is possible to explain physics ideas without mathematical formulas.͑Agree͒ 39.When I solve a physics problem, I explicitly think about which physics ideas apply to the problem.͑Agree͒ 40.If I get stuck on a physics problem, there is no chance I will figure it out on my own.͑Disagree͒ *41.It is possible for physicists to carefully perform the same experiment and get two very different results that are both correct.42.When studying physics, I relate the important information to what I already know rather than just memorizing it the way it is presented.͑Agree͒ Statements with * are not scored.
TableIIIshows the responses from 66 U.S. university and college physics faculty on the CLASS.The responses are given as a percentage of the faculty who agreed or disagreed with each statement.The accepted expert response is bolded and underlined.Statements which are not scored are not included in the table.

TABLE III .
The responses from 66 U.S. university and college physics faculty on the CLASS.