Students know what physicists believe but they don t agree A study using the CLASS survey Kara E Gray Wendy K Adams Carl E Wieman and Katherine K Perkins Department of Physics University of Colorado Boulder Colorado 80309 USA ABSTRACT 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 CLASS 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 01 40 Di 01 40 Fk 01 40 gf Gray et al To Appear in Physical Review 1 Do not Distrubte or Quote without Permission INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND While great inroads have been made to understand students ideas about physics content in order to improve student learning it is important to recognize that content knowledge is not the only thing that affects student learning 1 2 3 4 These references argue that student beliefs about physics about 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 6 In addition several surveys have been developed to study these beliefs and to document the affects of various curricula on these beliefs These surveys include the Views About Science Survey VASS 7 the Maryland Physics Expectation MPEX 8 the Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Physical Science EBAPS 9 and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey CLASS 10 Studies using these surveys in introductory college physics courses found that the population of students in these introductory courses have a wide range of beliefs about physics and learning physics with many students having quite novice views 8 10 For example novices view physics as a series of disconnected facts and algorithms presented by the professor the authority 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 novice like over of a standard introductory physics college course 8 10 11 Understanding the broad importance of these beliefs and how to change these beliefs through 2 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 13 In 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 introduce the idea that a student may believe one idea about studying physics for themselves their personal epistemology yet the same student may believe a different and contradictory idea holds true for physicists or people in general their public epistemology Students may think that they can t 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 15 16 asked students to complete the FCI 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 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 expert like beliefs in students 3 In this paper we focus on the following questions 1 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 2 Do students ideas about what physicists believe differ from their personal beliefs and are these ideas affected by college physics instruction 3 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 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