factors affecting physics achievement

Factors Affecting Physics Achievement

Running head: FACTORS AFFECTING PHYSICS ACHIEVEMENT

Factors Affecting Physics Achievement in Turkish High Schools

Zeynep Tuğba Kahyaoğlu

Middle East Technical University, Ankara

June, 2007

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Abstract

Purpose of this study was to make a literature review about the factors affecting achievement

of physics and prepare a paper of compiled results which gives implications to physics lessons

in Turkish High Schools. The databases of ERIC, EBSCO-HOST, Dissertation and Thesis

were searched with some key words such as “achievement, physics, high school, affecting

factors”. By the references of some found studies some other sources were determined and

reached then. The search engine Google was also searched with the same key words and some

necessary web pages were reached so by. The references found were categorized according to

related factors and hence, a table of factors affecting achievement of physics was prepared.

Some factors were chosen to focus on and the limits of the study were determined. The factors

are categorized under three main elements of education: students, teachers and environment.

Factors about students are taken as wider than others and it has subheadings of cognitive

domain, affective domain and general characteristics. The literature review about all chosen

factors was written with a combination of all. To see the event from students’ perspective, a

group interview was constructed with 51 high school students in Ankara. The results of the

group interview were parallel with results found in the literature review. The implication of

this study is the important duty of education faculties, researchers and prospective teachers to

work on improvement of effective physics teaching in Turkey.

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TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................2

TABLE OF CONTENT..............................................................................................................3

LIST OF TABLES......................................................................................................................5

FACTORS AFFECTING PHYSICS ACHIEVEMENT IN TURKISH HIGH SCHOOLS......6

METHOD...................................................................................................................................7

LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................................................8

FACTORS ABOUT STUDENTS....................................................................................................8

Cognitive Domain.............................................................................................................10

Mathematical skills.......................................................................................................10

Problem solving Skills and Logical Thinking Abilities................................................11

Visuo-spatial abilities....................................................................................................13

Intelligence Types.........................................................................................................13

Misconceptions.............................................................................................................15

Affective Domain..............................................................................................................18

Attitudes........................................................................................................................18

Views............................................................................................................................20

Motivation.....................................................................................................................20

Other affective characteristics.......................................................................................22

Students’ General Characteristics.....................................................................................22

Gender...........................................................................................................................22

Socio-economic status..................................................................................................24

FACTORS ABOUT TEACHERS..................................................................................................25

Field knowledge................................................................................................................25

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Personal Characteristics....................................................................................................26

FACTORS ABOUT ENVIRONMENT...........................................................................................28

School Type......................................................................................................................28

Classroom Climate............................................................................................................29

Evaluation Methods..........................................................................................................32

Curriculum........................................................................................................................33

GENERAL...............................................................................................................................33

GROUP INTERVIEW..............................................................................................................36

IMPLICATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS..................................................................................40

REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................44

APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………...49

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List of Tables

Table

1 List of Factors Affecting Physics Achievement under Three Main Elements of Education..9

2 Student Motivation with four areas…………………………………………………………21

3 Effects on achievement and attitudes of students with different perceptions of the

Interpersonal style of their physics teachers……………………………………………….31

4 Percentage Distributions of Students’ Responses to The Factors Affecting Physics

Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Environment……………………….…….40


Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Students ………………………..………..40


Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Teachers…………………………………41

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Factors Affecting Physics Achievement in Turkish High Schools

Education system of a country, especially if this country is a developing one has a

main role for its future and what is more the function of this role can not be met with some

other associations. Increasing the qualifications of trained people in all fields, making them as

not only feeling themselves responsible for their small or big duty but also having humanistic

insights and morality are the expected results of functioning of this vital role of education

systems. Sciences education and physics education specifically share this role and they also

carry additional importance due to their possible and probable effect on attitudes, interests and

curiosity in sciences that are the starting point of developments in science. Therefore, the

quality of physics instruction and its success are one of the subjects which are the most worth

for being researched and progressed for our developing country, Turkey.

The aims of this study are to see the things which affect students’ physics achievement

by searching about the topic in related literature and making an abstract of results in a manner

of carrying implications for physics education in Turkish high schools.

Personally, I chose this subject because of some reasons. Firstly, I was a high school

student who was a fan of physics and came to university to meet her appetite but, because of

some hidden reasons my interest and appetite was vanished. Hence, I started to think about

people who made me surprised in the past by saying “how can you love physics and how can

you achieve it?”, and I started to understand them. Therefore, one reason is to have a change

of seeing the scientific side of the event “achieving physics”. Secondly, I am a teacher

candidate and obviously will face with the similar questions (and as much more frequently I

think) when I appear in front of the students to whom I am responsible for teaching and

making them achieve physics. Second reason is to meet the requirements of this important

duty. Therefore, being aware of the factors affecting physics achievement would be very

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useful for me and may have a contribution to help interested people and teacher candidates to

see a compiled paper of results in literature.

The other and front reason is of course having some contribution on needed research

field of physics education for our country.

Method

First, to achieve related and necessary sources, combinations of some keywords such

as physics education, physics instruction, achievement affecting factors, physics achievement,

high school physics, physics teachers and etc. were used while scanning the source providers.

These words were the general ones for the beginning search. For specific sub-topics of the

study related keywords were used such as motivation, gender, socio-economic status,

mathematics ability, misconceptions etc. The databases: EBSCO HOST, ERIC, Dissertation

and Thesis, Library of Middle East Technical University and Internet search engine Google

were searched with those keywords. By the references of some found studies some other

related sources were determined and reached then. The books of studies that were presented in

the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th National Science and Mathematics Education Congresses were searched

for some related studies and the necessary ones were taken.

The articles and thesis found were categorized according to related factors and hence, a

table of factors affecting achievement of physics was prepared. Some factors were chosen to

focus on and the limits of the study were determined.

Factors were taken under three main elements of education which were students,

teachers and environment. Because, studies about student related factors are in a dominant

number with respect to teacher and environment related factors, the part for factors affecting

physics achievement related with students was taken as wider than the others. What is more,

student related factors were divided into three subheadings of cognitive domain, affective

domain and general characteristics. Teacher related factors would have also divided into same

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subheadings but because of limitation of the study teacher related factors were preferred to be

taken as in a more general view. Subheadings of the teacher related factors were the field

knowledge and personal characteristics. Chosen factors related with environment to focus on

could have been wider but again due to time limitation, four of them which are curriculum,

evaluation methods, classroom climate and school type were chosen. Indeed, these are the

most responsible factors for education in Turkish high schools. The literature review about all

these factors was written with a combination of their results.

To see the problem of factors affecting physics achievement from students’

perspective, a group interview was constructed with 51 high school students in Ankara.

Application of the group interview and participants were explained in the related section of

the paper.

Lastly, implications and projections of this study for physics instruction in Turkish

high schools were discussed in the last section.

Literature Review

Factors about Students

One can notice the greater number of studies about factors related with students’

characteristics than the other variables in the literature review of factors affecting

achievement in physics. These factors can be listed and categorized under the headings as:

cognitive domain, affective domain and general characteristics. All factors that are related

with students, teachers and environment are determined from the collected studies and

categorized as shown in Table 1. Although frame of this study does not cover all of them,

most important ones for Turkish high schools were objected to be chosen to include in this

frame.

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Table 1

List of Factors Affecting Physics Achievement under Three Main Elements of Education__________________________________________________________________________

Factors Affecting Physics Achievement________________________________________________

Factors about Students Factors About Teachers Factors About Environment ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Cognitive domain_____________________________ Behaviors School TypeMathematical skills Problem solving skills Relations with students Reasoning skills Evaluation MethodsIntelligence type Personal characteristics Misconceptions Language skills Language use & skills Classroom ClimateWay of Learning Cognitive development Field knowledge Curriculum Affective Domain Attitudes_______________________________ Attitudes/interests Pedagogy Usage Availabilities/tools Motivation Self confidence General CulturePrior experiences Books Charisma General characteristics ________________________________ Physical appearance Method of instructionGender Socio-economic status Enthusiasm Family background Laboratory Usage ___________________________________________________________________________

Indeed, some of these factors can be accepted as interrelated with each other because

studies have shown that some factors arise, increase or decrease with some other factors;

especially the students’ general characteristics may be the roots of things to become affective

or not on achievement. For example, according to some studies misconceptions are begin by

wrong interpretations or being lack of daily life experiences and what is more, experiences

that a student has chance to have is dependent on the gender or culture (Sencar & Eryılmaz,

2004; Temizkan, 2003; Jones, Howe & Rua, 2000). That is what we see that subject of

factors affecting achievement is not a simple task. Therefore, it is usual that most studies have

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studied more than one factors in one time and indicated dependency of these variables on one

another. Hence, it would be better to talk about the factors about students in those categorized

groups.

Cognitive Domain

Mathematical skills. Achievement in physics is evaluated by some various techniques

which may be traditional exams, tests etc or may be some new developed alternative

instruments such as portfolios, concept maps etc. However, the most often used evaluation is

the physics problems including mathematics at various levels. It is frequent that very well

learning of the necessary problem solving techniques and ability of solving the problems of a

physics course signify passing of it (Wright & Williams as cited in Brekke, 1994).

According to some researchers mathematics in physics is one of the major factors

affecting students’ achievement in some various subjects of physics (Champagne, Leopold &

Anderson, 1980; Cohen, Hillman & Agne as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995; Griffith; Peltzer as

cited in Delialioğlu, 1995). Moreover, this effect of mathematics does not only come from its

being of a prerequisite for physics but also come from its influence on attitudes of students. In

the study of Ogunsola-Bendele (1996), among 104 high school students, 75.95 % of them

prefer the item of “I feel like walking out of the class when the teacher starts to write

equations on the board”. In addition to that again 68.26 % of same students prefer the item

“The calculation in physics makes me score lower on the subject”. In fact, these are high

ratios and imply that mathematics in physics frightens students. Moreover, we can also see the

results of this affect on physics achievement of students. By the early studies of physics

education, there are many studies done that found meaningful positive correlations between

mathematical skills of students and their physics achievement. For Turkish students we can

look at the study of Delialioğlu (1995) in which the correlation coefficient between the test

scores of physics achievement and mathematical skills is found as 0.4589 (p<0.05) and at one

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other study of Ergun, Özdemir and Çorlu (2004) in which the correlation coefficient between

the test scores of physics achievement and numerical reasoning aptitudes is found as 0.565

(p<0.01).

Beside all these ideas about the effect of mathematical skills on students’ physics

achievement, there are also a number of studies which found that mathematical skills alone

are not as important as some other cognitive factors such as spatial ability, reasoning skills

etc. The effect of mathematical skills is unavoidable but much more meaningful to talk about

its combined effect with some other highly correlated cognitive factors (Delialioğlu, 1995;

Hudson & Mclntire as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995; Hudson & Rottman as cited in Delialioğlu,

1995; Griffith as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995).

After considering the findings about the effect of mathematical skills such as its being

of a prerequisite for physics courses, increasing the physics achievement as directly or

indirectly, and affecting students’ attitudes towards physics, we can conclude that all of us (as

students, teachers and academicians) have to give attention on mathematical side of physics

for achievement.

As indicated above, effect of mathematical skills on physics achievement is better to

talk about with combination of other cognitive factors. The most related and effective

cognitive factors are found as with their sub-factors visual-spatial abilities, logical thinking

abilities, and problem solving skills.

Problem solving Skills and Logical Thinking Abilities. A physics problem is an

incorporation of qualitative and quantitative aspects and qualitative aspects are harder to learn

(Brekke, 1994). But as mentioned in above studies, quantitative aspect i.e. mathematics of

physics problems is generally considered as a bigger barrier of achievement both by students

and researchers. I think this idea may be rooted from the effects of math on attitudes and its

degeneracy from its real function. Qualitative aspect of the event is the main goal, is just the

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physics that is wanted to be learned or taught, so the remaining one (mathematics or

quantitative aspect which should only be a tool for physics) become the guilty of something

going wrong in education process. But, problem solving does not need to depend on mostly

on mathematical games; it may depend more on conceptual aspect of physics and less on

math. Whatever it is, problem solving is very important for learning construction.

Leonard, Gerace and Dufresne (1999) explain the role of problem solving very well

with a nice analogy:

Learning science is like climbing a ladder. To get to the top of the latter, you

need to have both legs working together. One leg supports you as the other leg

raises you up to the next rung. In this same way conceptual analysis and

problem solving work together, each one supporting and improving the other

(p.2).

For university level physics achievement according to the study of Peltzer (as cited

in Delialioğlu, 1995), physicists in universities and colleges believe that ability to attack

problems in a potentially productive way (problem solving) is one of the most important

four affecting factors for students.

It is plausible to talk about one’s logical thinking abilities when considering

his/her ability to solve a problem, whether this can be a physics problem. Liberman and

Hudson (as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995) found a correlation coefficient of 0.49 between

logical abilities of students and their physics final examination grades. Another study

that shows parallel result is that of Tobin and Capie (as cited in Delialioğlu, 1995). They

measured middle school students’ formal reasoning with Test of Logical Thinking and

their science achievement with a test developed by the researchers own. The correlation

coefficient was found as 0.60. For Turkish high school students Delialioğlu, (1995) found

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the correlation coefficient between students’ logical thinking abilities and their physics

achievement as 0.46 (p<0.05).

Visuo-spatial abilities. “Spatial Visualization Ability refers to the ability to

mentally manipulate 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional figures. It is typically measured

with simple cognitive tests and is predictive of user performance with some kinds of user

interfaces” (Wikipedia, 2007). Science and mostly physics concerned with location,

position, motion and shape of objects, so it is usual if one can expect a link between

physics achievement and visuo-spatial thinking. In fact, that is what we saw in the results

of studies.

Visual-spatial ability is generally accepted as one of the favorable variable that can

affect physics achievement and there are many studies about their correlation in the

literature. Delialioğlu (1995) find a correlation coefficient of 0.45 between spatial

abilities and achievement of physics topic of electrostatics and electric current. Kavaz

and Eryılmaz (2003) found it as 0.83 for optics subject of physics. Another finding about

visuo-spatial abilities is that taking physics improves it (Pallrand & Seeber as cited in

Delialioğlu). Hence, it is obvious that considering spatial abilities of students in teaching

of physics will be meaningful.

Intelligence Types. Gardner (1983) opened a new window and so provided an important

sight to the subject of intelligence. He saved the intelligence concept from being compressed

between having meanings of linguistic and logical-mathematical skills and abilities. He

defines eight types of intelligences which can all be developed and are not only inborn. These

are logical/mathematical, linguistic, musical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal,

intrapersonal and naturalist intelligences. Brief explanations of intelligence types are as

follows:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_Visualization_Ability

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-dimensional_space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_dimensional


Linguistic intelligence: “The ability to effectively manipulate language to express oneself

rhetorically and poetically” (Gürçay, 2003, p.12).

Logical/Mathematical intelligence: “The ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and

think logically” (Gürçay, 2003, p.12).

Musical intelligence: “The ability to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones and

rhythm” (Gürçay, 2003, p.12).

Visual/Spatial intelligence: “The ability to form a mental model of spatial world and to be

able to maneuver and operate using that model” (Gardner, 1993, p.9).

Bodily/Kinesthetic intelligence: “The ability to solve problems or to fashion products using

one’s whole body, or parts of the body” (Gardner, 1993, p.9).

Interpersonal intelligence: “The ability to understand other people: what motivates them, how

they work, how to work cooperatively with them” (Gardner, 1993, p.9).

Intrapersonal intelligence: “A correlative ability turned inward. It is a capacity to form an

accurate, veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate effectively in

life” (Gardner, 1993, p.9).

Naturalist intelligence: “The ability to recognize and classify plants, minerals and animals”

(Gürçay, 2003, p.12).

By addressing to these multiple intelligences of students, physics instruction may be

planned accordingly and so outcome of the teaching process would grow because students

would learn better with doing what they have potential and ability to. Gürçay (2003) searched

for the effect of multiple intelligence based instruction on physics achievement of students in

Turkey.

In the study there was a control group of four 9th grade classes in which traditional

instruction was used and an experimental group of four 9th grade classes in which multiple

intelligences theory based instruction was used. By applying pretest and posttest about

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attitude toward the content Coulomb’s Law it was found that mean of the experimental

group’s scores was increased by 4.53 points and interestingly mean of the control group’s

scores was decreased by 0.61 points. This shows that multiple intelligence based lessons

increase students’ attitudes toward the subjects. Moreover, results of pretest and posttests of

multiple choice physics achievement showed that mean of experimental groups’ scores

increased by 1.59 points whereas it was 0.96 for the control groups.

Other significant result of Gürçay’s study was that according to the questionnaire

results 73% of students believed that their interest increased, and 64.9% of students said that

their physics achievement increased by multiple intelligences based instruction.

Moreover it is found that students multiple intelligences theory based educational settings

improves attitudinal behaviors (Campell as cited in Gürçay, 2003; Goodnough as cited in

Gürçay, 2003) and achievement (Aşçı as cited in Gürçay, 2003; Coşkungönüllü as cited in

Gürçay, 2003; Campell as cited in Gürçay, 2003) of secondary school students.

Misconceptions. One of the most studied area of factors affecting students’ physics

achievement is misconceptions or with better names: alternative conceptions or pre-

conceptions. There are more names about preconceptions in the literature such as children’s

scientific intuitions, children’s science, common sense concepts,

alternative frameworks and spontaneous knowledge (Eryılmaz, 2002; Gedis,

1991). But I think pre-conceptions is the best one because having a concept

in one’s mind implies previous thought whether it is wrong or right and its

rather than not to have any idea and would help its owner think deeply

and criticize when feel that something is wrong there. Clement (1982)

says that preconceptions can be thought as “zeroth order models” that

have a predictive power and may help in achieving greater precision and

generality. However, “misconception” name differs a bit by making an

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emphasis on the ideas, concepts that have contradiction with scientific

ones (Eryılmaz, 2002).

All students and all human in fact, gain some idea about the behaviors and nature of

objects due to their own experiences, observations, and some assimilated information from

their environment. Indeed, this situation is normal but its bad aspect and the situation which

turns them into “misconceptions” is that these preconceptions are persistent to change and as

Clement (1993) explains that a preconception can conflict with currently accepted physical

theory. That is when one student come to class with having some wrong beliefs about a

concept, it may be very hard to change it and make it grasp so student change his/her

behaviors accordingly. He/she can writes or defines the concept as in books but he/she tries to

explain or behave with the wrong persistent idea in his/her mind or with another explanation

as Linder (as cited in Geddis, 1991) does: “…students consciously adopt scientific views in

order to “pass the course” but they still don’t believe them” (p.1). The effect of students’

misconceptions on their physics achievement comes from this aspect obviously.

Researchers, educators and physiologists work in that area to find methods of changing

students’ conceptions into the scientific ones. The famous one is the “conceptual change

method”.

Geddis (1991) talks about a paradigm shift of emphasis “from changing students’

concepts to enabling students to understand the origin and justification of scientific views”

(p.3). According to researchers at that idea, the important thing is to teach fishing rather than

giving fish. In other words, when one student learns to construct his/her own learning in a

scientific way there is no more things to care. But on the other hand, there were also some

researchers who are in the thought of importance of the way of instruction. I think these are

the ones who feel themselves more responsible for being of an educator, teacher, instructor

etc. For instance, some of researchers focus on the importance of the spoken language, used

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words and sentences of teachers during instruction to prevent occurring new misconceptions

or remediate current ones (McClelland, 1985; Slotta, Chi & Joram, 1995). In fact, effects of

teaching methodology, metaphors, analogies, examination papers, textbooks and teachers on

students misunderstanding of physics are the findings of many studies (Helm as cited in

Koçyiğit, 2003; Ivowi & Oludotun as cited in Koçyiğit, 2003; Johnstone & Mughol as cited in

Koçyiğit, 2003; Pine, Messer & John as cited in Koçyiğit, 2003).

According to McClelland (1985), to avoid misconceptions teachers should obey three

rules which are: i) defining terms and concepts unambiguously, ii) using them consistently

with wide exemplification, and iii) explaining their limits of applicability. This is a view

about giving a very important responsibility to teachers. However, from another view Geddis

(1991) defines the needs of changing a student’s concept in to scientific ones are like that:

i) “need to learn to doubt commonsense evidence” (p.8), ii) “need opportunities to imagine

alternative possibilities” (p.8), and iii) “need practice of employing some of the criteria used

in science to validate their alternative ideas” (p.8). I think this view is more about the method

of instruction and making students learn way of learning. There are many other methods,

ideas and studies about remediation of misconceptions in the literature. My concern about this

is the effect of misconceptions in achievement of physics and it is obvious that having

misconception decreases achievement in physics because a misconception test is a measure of

achievement itself in physics.

Moreover, in their study Champagne, Klopfer and Anderson (1980) found a positive

correlation coefficient of 0.24 between mechanics achievement scores and demonstration,

observation and explanation of motion test (D.OE.) scores (D.O.E. test measures the

preconceptions about motion as indicated in the study). But as it is seen that the correlation

coefficient is not a very high number and as Champagne et al. explain in their paper that

D.O.E. test score is not a strong predictor of mechanics achievement for their study. Indeed,

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this can be accepted as normal because it is found that many students, even excellent students

may not have deep understanding of physics concepts and at the same time they can do very

well in physics exams and homeworks with mathematical manipulations only (Reif as cited in

Redish & Steinberg, 1999).

To conclude because it is frequent for someone: a student, even a honor student

(Peters, 1981) or a teacher (Kikas, 2004) to have misconceptions of physics and they are hard

to be replaced with scientific facts, hence, it would be worth for working on the methods of

remediation of misconceptions and consider them as a big factor affecting physics learning

firstly and physics achievement secondly.

Affective Domain

Schwedes (as cited in Laukenmann et al., 2003) warned about physics teaching that

that the fact of students being young people with having kinds of interests, feelings, desires

and experiences is not considered adequately. Except for experiences, other characteristics of

students he warned are in affective domain.

Affective characteristics of students are accepted as one of the affecting factor of their

science achievement according to studies done about, in the literature. According to Bloom’s

(as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005) study , 50 % of the achievement depends on entering cognitive

characteristics and the other half of the achievement is shared by the effects of the way that

students feel toward what they are studying, their self-concept, quality of instruction and

school environment. Some other affective factors such as interest, locus of control, academic

self concept etc. are all found as being correlated with science achievement. However, the

controversial side of the event is the direction of these correlations.

Attitudes. According to Bloom (as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005), students have perceptions

about their past and expected future performances according to the judgments done about

their marks which are compared with marks of their friends. If we can talk about that

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perceptions affect achievement, by the statement of Bloom we can conclude that actual past

achievement of students also affects their future achievement. Indeed, in the literature

attitudes are mostly found as having meaningful correlations with science achievement

(Barrington & Hendricks as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005; Cannon & Simpson as cited in

Tekiroğlu, 2005; Haladayna, Olsen & Shaughness as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005; Morrel &

Lederman as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005; Oliver & Simpson as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005). Hence,

this would become a continuous cycle. Once a student feels the achievement, then he/she

develops positive attitudes about the lesson and again by the force of these good thoughts

he/she would be more willing and patient for further studying and so become successful.

Again this success brings positive attitudes about the lesson. But the starting point of this

cycle can be different for students.

Tekiroğlu (2005) lists some directions found in the literature as: for earlier ages in

school the direction is “achievement attitudes” and for older ages it turns as “attitudes

achievement” (Willson as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005), for a causal chain the direction is

“perceptions attitudes achievement” (Schibeci & Riley as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005) or is

“achievement attitudes” (Reynolds & Walberg as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005). Again

according to Jerusalem and Pekrun (as cited in Laukenmann et al., 2003) positive emotions

are in a high frequency of connection with learning and performance. The shared idea of all

these researchers is that achievement and attitudes of science are affected by each other and so

have a causal relationship.

One reason that students develop negative attitudes towards physics is that their

tendency to think that physics study is irrelevant to real world or limited in an ideal laboratory

(Adams & Chiappetta, 1998; Shecker as cited in Park & Lee, 2004). Seeing the links of

physics with ever day life would cause interest and so positive attitudes towards physics.

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Moreover, Koçyiğit (2003) in his study found a negative correlation coefficient

between scores of misconceptions about static electricity and scores of attitudes. This means

that students who are more interested in static electricity have fewer misconceptions about the

subject.

Views. Halloun (1996), made a study named Views about Science Survey (VASS) to

examine the students’ views about science learning - knowing and its relation with their

science achievement. From the results of 25 item VASS test, students were categorized into

three profiles which were expert, transitional and folk. The majority of the students (73 %)

were found as transitional profile that had both almost equally scientific and folkloric views

about science. More about this profile was that 67 % of students who got grade A from

college physics course were in that profile. The expert profile students were found as 11 % of

all, but success of those students were best among itself when compared with other profiles,

such that 95 % of them got grade C or better from college physics course. The noticeable

result about students with folk profile was that none of them got grade A and only 9 % of

them got grade B from college physics course.

The implication of Halloun’s study with his expression was that “the closer students

are to expert views on individual items or to an expert profile on the entire VASS, the better

their performance in college physics courses; and the closer they are to a folk view/profile, the

worse their performance” (p.13).

Motivation. Motivation with its sub dimensions such as achievement motivation,

intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is a very vital and corner stone in the basis of achievement

not only in physics but also in some other field of life I think. In fact this is opposed by a

greater number of studies about the effect of motivation in the literature.

Motivation is defined as “internal state or condition that activates behavior and gives it

direction” (Huitt, 2001) and divided into two according to its source as intrinsic and extrinsic

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motivation. Huitt (2001) explains “motivation to learn” such as: the intrinsic one is sourced

from internal of a person. Cognition, affect, conation, biology and spiritual sides can affect

intrinsic motivation. Whereas the extrinsic one is sourced from outside of the person and it

has parts as operant conditioning and social cognition. Both are accepted as important for

learning. However, extrinsic motivation is the more common one that students held for

physical science (Tuan, Chin & Shieh as cited in Tuan, Chin & Tsai, 2003).

Tuan, Chin and Tsai, (2003) categorized student motivation into four areas as shown in

Table 2.

Table 2

Student Motivation with four areas

__________________________________________________________________________

Student Motivation________________________________________________

Conception of Learning Instructional Interests & Effort & Ability Goals Environment Responses

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Way of students Competing with Cold competitive, Own interest. treat success in others, attracting warmly acceptable Teachers’, science learning teacher’s attention, learning environment parents’ and improving ability, created by teachers. peers’ etc responses.___________________________________________________________________________

It can be seen from Table 2 that student motivation is more likely to be extrinsic.

Competitions with peers, teachers’ and peers’ expectations, learning environment are all

related with extrinsic motivation.

Uğurluoğlu and Walberg (as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005) indicated that motivation and

achievement had a correlation coefficient of 0.338. In concept learning also, motivation of

students is found very important (Ogbortn et al.; Tuan, Chin & Hsich as cited in Tuan, Chin &

Tsai, 2003). Another affect of motivation on achievement is its function of filling the gaps of

21


deficiencies, and being a power of fight with obstacles. Hudson and Mclentire (as cited in

Brekke, 1994) showed this effect with their studies that highly motivated students can

accomplish their inadequacy of prerequisite mathematics and pass the introductory college

physics successfully.

Different from the attitudes of students, motivation is more likely to be the source of

achievement. That is the direction of relation is more typical. For their triple relation, Abak

(as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005) in her study among university students, defines a causal order in

the direction “attitude motivation achievement motivation achievement”.

The positive effect of motivation on achievement is obvious but the necessary side of

the subject is the ways of providing motivation. While considering extrinsic motivation the

role of teachers, parents and school environment is unavoidable (Tekiroğlu, 2005) and since

in early years the gained achievement leads to attitude and so as to future achievement, the

importance of providing student motivation comes into light. The effect of teachers in terms

of motivation providence will be discussed in the following parts of the study.

Other affective characteristics. Some other affective characteristics of students that

found as correlated with their science achievement are like that:

Jacobowitz (as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005) found a correlation coefficient of 0.45

between self-concept and science achievement of 8th grade students.

Abak (as cited in Tekiroğlu, 2005), found that interest of students affect their

motivation, and then motivation affects their achievement in physics.

Students’ General Characteristics

Gender. The assertion that gender is effective on science achievement dates back for

very old times, and this is maybe because of the women’s missing role in science in the past.

However, this assertion is proposed with many studies finding that males do better in science

courses than females do (Becker as cited in Temizkan, 2003; Erickson & Erickson as cited in

22


Temizkan, 2003; Johnson as cited in Temizkan, 2003; Lee & Burkam as cited in Temizkan,

2003; TIMSS as cited in Temizkan, 2003, Yıldırım & Eryılmaz, 1999). In the beginning

studies about gender effect on science achievement mostly tried to explain it with biological

differences (different functioning of males’ and females’ brains). However, now it is turned

out to be that cultural and social effects are more responsible for making gender an affecting

factor of science achievement (Anonymous, 2007; Baird as cited in Temizkan, 2003; Erickson

& Erickson as cited in Temizkan).This may be enough to understand why today’s women are

more successful in science areas than they were in the past of different culture.

Among science courses, physics is the most influenced one according to the

achievement of girls and boys (Young, 1991). According to the literature, there are some

possible reasons of gender becoming effective on science achievement: differing in science-

related experience, cultural effects, social effects and biological effects.

Jones Howe and Rua (2000) asserted that boys have more out of school activities that

are related with physical sciences than girls who have more out of school activities that are

related with biology. We, as having Turkish culture, are all familiar with boys carrying bags,

playing with sling shot, electronic toys such as guns or doing sports such as football. Also for

girls we are familiar with their playing with mud or sand (making cake, house etc.), picking

up flowers, collecting stones, shells etc which are more related with biology and chemistry.

As we talked above misconceptions that students have are a big barrier for physics

achievement. Because misconceptions are related with the experience of students and the

experience that a boy and girl has become different by social and cultural effects, it is

probable that there is a gender difference in having misconceptions. For instance, that is the

result found by many studies that boys have fewer misconceptions in mechanics subject of

physics (Eryılmaz & Tatlı, 2001; Eryılmaz, 2002; Temizkan, 2003; Yılmaz & Eryılmaz,

1999) and electrostatics and electric current subjects of physics ( Sencar & Eryılmaz, 2004 ).

23


Also the effect of experiences on misconceptions is supported by the study of Koçyiğit

(2003). He found that students who are more experienced in static electricity subject have

fewer misconceptions about the subject.

However, for some other view to the situation is that the gender difference may depend

on the context of the questions asked to assess misconceptions (Sencar & Eryılmaz, 2004).

When students’ some characteristics such as age, and interest-experience concerned with

electricity are controlled in the context of questions, the gender difference vanishes

(Chambers & Andre Sencar & Eryılmaz, 2004; Erickson & Erickson as cited in Sencar &

Eryılmaz, 2004; Sencar & Eryılmaz, 2004).

Temizkan (2003) found that the gender difference on force motion misconceptions of

students depends on age, attitude, mechanics achievement, experience and school type.

Socio-economic status. Socio-economic status and family background are accepted as

indirectly affecting factors of students’ achievement in school. Because perceptions, attitudes,

experiences, and more things that are related with affective characteristics and some other

things related with cognitive characteristics are affected by environment and family, it can be

plausible to expect a relationship between socio-economic status and school achievement of

students.

Yılmaz et al. (2004) investigated the effect of economic condition of Turkish students

with their physics achievement and found that physics achievement of students’ increases as

their economic status increases. But, pocket money that a student gets from his family

becomes inversely proportional to physics achievement as going to very higher and lower

values of money. Student who got pocket money of middle values according to the study were

the most successful ones among others. Another result of that study was that for general

brother-sister number of students was also found as inversely proportional to physics

achievement.

24


Also Carpenter and Hayden (as cited in Koçyiğit, 2003) found positive correlations

between achievement and students’ socio-economic status, that have sub-dimensions of

father’s and mother’s educations, father’s occupation, sex composition of school, teachers’

and parents’ encouragement, peers’ plan and science subjects taken, for two Australian states.

However, it was noted that for two different states of Australia correlation coefficients were

different. For one all correlation coefficients for sub-dimensions of socio-economic status

were below 0.20, on the other hand for other one they were above 0.25. This showed that for

different cultural environments effect of socio-economic status may differ.

Another study showed the effect of socio-economic status on achievement for Turkish

students was that of Çataloğlu (as cited in Koçyiğit, 2003). He found a significant difference

between achievements in mechanics misconception test of students from upper and lower

socio economic status. Also Koçyiğit (2003) reached to a similar result that students from

lower socio economic status have more misconceptions about static electricity when

compared to students from higher socio economic status.

Factors about Teachers

Field knowledge. According to Büyükkaragöz and Kesici (as cited in Korur, 2001)

organized teachers should based on three major characteristics which are knowledge of

profession, pedagogical knowledge and ability, and related knowledge of culture.

It is obvious that well knowledge of profession is the first prerequisite for being a good

teacher. Researchers generally investigated the knowledge of profession as divided into

subject knowledge (physics for our concern) and pedagogical knowledge.

Studies have shown that teachers knowledge of subject matter and students’

achievement are reasonably related (Aiello-Nicosia as cited in Korur, 2001; Sperandeo-Mineo

& Valenza as cited in Korur, 2001).

25


Different from subject knowledge, feeling the needs of students from a physiological

point of view requires pedagogical knowledge of teachers. Lederman, Ges-Newsome and Latz

(as cited in Korur, 2001) stated that assessment of students’ understanding and changing way

of approach accordingly were considered in pedagogical knowledge by preservice teachers.

Teachers’ usage of everyday phenomenon during instruction may improve physics

learning of students. The result of Rennie and Parker’s study (as cited in Park & Lee, 2004)

proposed this idea by finding that seven out of eight students performed better in real-life

problems. Teachers’ usage of everyday phenomenon needs their related knowledge of culture.

However, in grades eight to ten teachers have tendency to give content without specific details

and only instruct in a general manner (Gallagher & Tobin as cited in Korur, 2001).

According to results of a questionnaire applied to 2177 high school students in

Turkey, Korur (2001) found that teachers’ easily answering to students’ questions related to

physics is one of the most effective factors of physics achievement. This factor is related with

teachers’ subject knowledge obviously.

Personal Characteristics. Teachers’ general characteristics such as interests, values,

behaviors personality etc. are all related with affective domain and may be the most important

things which differentiate affective, good, successful teachers from others. In fact, Klausimer

and Goodwin (as cited in Korur, 2001) asserted that those affective differences are more

responsible for determining the success of teachers because other cognitive characteristics are

generally become almost the same due to completing an education faculty.

I think that as always we are talking about the science of teaching, there are more

things hidden in the event which turns it to a real education of not only science, but also life

and more. These hidden things are the art of teaching which are mostly rooted from effective

characteristics of teachers. Lawrenz (as cited in Korur, 2001) pointed on the necessity of

26


identification of affective characteristics of teachers to achieve teaching of how to teach to

teacher candidates.

Indeed, teachers’ characteristics do not only affect students’ physics achievement but

also their attitudes and motivation (Korur, 2001; Tuan, Chin & Tsai, 2003).

Positive relations of teachers with students’ parents are also found providing better

motivation, higher self-esteem, improved behaviour and so achievement (Al-Houli as cited in

Korur, 2001; Spain as cited in Korur, 2001).

About teachers’ expectations from students Guttmann (as cited in Korur, 2001) found

that student’s gender, name, ethnic background, socio economic status, and physical

characteristics are effective. What is more, when teachers expect more improved achievement

from their students they devote effort for their studies.

Korur (2001) found that characteristics of teachers which are personal and general ones

such as gender, elder, physical appearance to be rich or poor, way of dressing are the least

effective on students’ achievement. However, he also found that most affective factors on

achievement are dealing with some of the students, not with the whole class, coming to class

well prepared and usage of swearing words and lecturing reluctantly, which are all related

with teachers’ personal characteristics.

Positive effect of motivation on students’ achievement was discussed in previous parts

and we had concluded that the important aspect that educators should care is providing the

student motivation. The role of teachers on providing student motivation is a subject studied

by many researchers. For students who have already intrinsic motivation to learn and high

positive attitudes toward the lesson, being lack of teacher’s support may not be a problem for

achievement whereas, for students who have low value in understanding science and negative

attitudes toward the lesson, an extensive support of teacher is needed for achievement and

what is more it is the most significant factor for their motivation (Barlia & Beeth, 1999).

27


Barlia and Beeth (1999) summarized an important result with these sentences very

well I think:

At least two factors related to student motivation constraints to engage

in conceptual change learning are identified. These constraints include

students’ lack value of in the goal of scientific understanding and students’

lack of interest in science learning. To reduce these motivational

constraints science teachers have to help students (a) realize that scientific

understanding is a valuable goal as the first priority of learning science,

and (b) develop positive attitude toward science (p.19).

Prospective teachers’ effective characteristics, field knowledge and knowledge of

related general culture shows importance of their own one more time with the above result.

Factors about Environment

School Type. School type is one of the environmental differences with having different

conditions of availabilities, teacher quality, student quality, curriculum etc. Especially in

Turkey, there are many different types of high school which differ in the conditions I wrote

below. In fact, objectives of these schools are different. That is for example, some types are

preparing students for various vocational jobs and want their student have knowledge and

experience in a specified area whereas other types wants their students know English in a high

level and achieved the general objectives of national education standards for high schools.

Because of that the curriculum of a lesson, say physics is not same for all types of school, we

can not expect the physics achievement of these students to be comparable for the same exam,

such as university entrance exam. However, physics achievement in one type of school should

be considered among itself.

Some studies done in Turkey took the difference results of different type of schools

into consideration and showed their results separately while searching for achievement.

28


Ergun, Özdemir and Çorlu (2004) studied the effects of language and numerical reasoning

aptitudes on physics achievement and they chose their sample with equal number of students

from five different types of schools which were Anatolian, super, normal, vocational and

religious vocational high schools. First, students were administered to language and numerical

reasoning aptitudes tests. Success orders of schools for both tests’ results were same. From

highest to lowest the order was like that: Anatolian, super, normal, religious vocational and

vocational high schools.

Another way that school types can differ is that having single sex education or

coeducation. In the past of Turkey, schools can differ according to this but it was forbidden in

1997 and ruled that education in Turkey is coeducation only.

The single sex education is a controversial subject but studies showed that achievement

increases in those types of schools both for girls and boys (Young & Fraser, 1992). Carpenter

and Hayden, (as cited in Young & Fraser, 1992) found that in Australia, students of private

single sex schools have higher achievement than students of government coeducational

schools. However, Young and Fraser (1992) pointed out that the difference in socio-economic

backgrounds could be an underlying affecting factor. Some researchers found that girls’

achievement in single sex schools becomes higher but boys’ achievement becomes lower than

in coeducational schools (Steedman as cited in Young & Fraser, 1992).

Classroom Climate. Providing an effective classroom climate depends on both teachers

and students. Class size and characteristics of students are obviously important but because

they are probable to be affected from school type and the distinct where the school is, they

can be studied by these frames. Therefore, I prefer to mention about effect of teacher.

It is acceptable to say that a teacher is the engine of a working class especially for our

teacher directed classes in Turkey. If a good quality in-class communication is provided, and

assisted by effort of teachers success and interest of students may be influenced. This in-class

29


communication may not only be verbal but also nonverbal. Wubbels, Tartwijk, and

Brekelmans (1995) assert that:

Even though the school is very much verbally oriented institution in

which one of the main activities is the verbal transfer of formation, it is

important to study nonverbal teacher behavior to be able to better

understand classroom communication process (p.3).

Wubbels et al. (1995), determined eight model of teacher behavior by applying a

questionnaire both to students and their physics teachers asking about their perceptions of

teachers. Those models are: directive, authorative, tolerant & authorative, tolerant, uncertain

& tolerant, uncertain & aggressive, repressive and drudging. The classroom environments for

those eight different models of teacher are different.

Directive teachers’ classrooms have a well structured and task oriented learning

environment. However, students of an authorative teacher perform better than of a directive

teacher. This may be because authorative teachers are enthusiastic and open to student needs.

In a class of teacher who is both tolerant and authorative, the classroom climate supports

students’ responsibility and freedom. Students in this type of a class enjoy the lesson and

highly involved. If a teacher is tolerant but not authorative, his/her class sometimes may be

confused. Moreover, if these tolerant teachers are uncertain at the same time lessons become

poorly structured. Teacher wants to conduct information but he/she does not much follow

through it, so only willing students who sit in front desks listen to teacher, other students

behave freely. And these teachers generally ignore them or sometimes can unexpectedly

react. Overall result on this type of a class is unproductive.

Another interpersonal characteristic of teachers which makes classroom climate and

learning environment ineffective is that being aggressive. Students and teachers behave like

opponents to each other. Students provoke teacher by some disorderly behaviors and teacher

30


over reacts but then again students retort even with greater misbehaviors. Students think that

their teacher has no right to punish or interfere them. The teacher tries to control class for

most of the lesson time. Learning becomes least important as a result.

Other interpersonal characteristic of teachers is that of being repressive. In a repressive

teacher’s class students become so silent and uninvolved because they are afraid of their

teacher. General atmosphere of the class is guarded and unpleasant. Teacher expects high

achievement from his/her students and gives little but precious help to them; hence this makes

students worried.

The last type of teacher that the study determined is drudging one. The class of a

drudging teacher is not enthusiastic, not supportive and not competitive. When students are

silent teacher directly turns to the subject matter and follows his/her routine lesson without

any care about warmth of general atmosphere. If students behave disorderly, drudging

teachers spend much energy to manage them and they general achieve it.

The effect of these different interpersonal styles of teachers on students’ achievement

and attitudes are shown with correlation coefficients found by Wubbels et al. (1995) in Table 3.

We can conclude that classroom climate is very important for effective instruction.

Moreover, teachers are one of the main factors that students’ perceived the learning

environment (Akyıldız as cited in Korur, 2001).

31


Table 3

Effects on achievement and attitudes of students with different perceptions of the

interpersonal style of their physics teachers (Wubbels et al., 1995)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Interpersonal Style Effect on Achievement (a) Effect on Attitudes (b)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

1 Directive 0.17 0.62

2 Authorative 0.07 0.79

3 Authorative / Tolerant missing (c) missing (c)

4 Tolerant 0.23 0.53

5 Uncertain / Tolerant -0.17 0.51

6 Uncertain / Aggressive -0.15 0.20

7 Repressive 0.40 0.38

8 Drudging 0 0_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(a) Achievement was measured with a standardized and internationally developed physics test.

(b) Attitudes was measured by a questionnaire on students’ experience with and motivation toward physics

(c) Too few cases to include in analyses.

Evaluation Method. Young and Fraser (1992) talked about the possibility that some

exam types may favor some students which can do well on a specific type. For example some

students may do better on selecting types than producing or responding types.

There is an idea that multiple choice items may be biased in favor of male students

(Bolger & Kellaghan as cited in Young & Fraser, 1992; Harding as cited in Young & Fraser,

1992; Murphy as cited in Young & Fraser, 1992; Mazzeo, Schmitt & Bleistein as cited in

Young & Fraser, 1992). Moreover, it is argued that extensive usage of standardized

achievement tests affects achievement of students because multiple choice formats are not

adequate for assessing students’ some cognitive skills such as complex problem solving skills,

divergent thinking and some affective skills such as communication skills and collaborative

efforts among students (Lipman as cited in Anonymous, 2007). Surely, to make a successful

32


and reliable assessment determination of objectives and way of suitable assessment critique of

understanding how students are mastered in content are important.

Another founding about the evaluation methods is that students enjoyed non

threatening activities such as laboratory experiments (Piburn & Baker as cited in Korur,

2001). Therefore, their attitudes and achievement may be influenced positively by the usage

of instructional methods and tools which give more importance to evaluation of process and

improvement of students, such as portfolios, inquiry, discovery, and project based instruction

etc.

Curriculum. To see how an intensive curriculum of physics affects physics achievement

of students, Tuncer and Eryılmaz (2002) applied a questionnaire to 65 students and 16

teachers and searched for their ideas. Results showed that if subject numbers are decreased for

defined time and more time is spent for main points of subjects the interest of student will

grow for the lesson and therefore, this would affect their achievement.

Brekke (1994) asserts that curriculum may influence the achievement of students in

both high school physics and introductory university physics in terms of passing or failing it.

But, He explains that this affect of course maybe due to the fact that mastering a physics

course means solving problems including mathematics so, one type of course may more

depend on problem solving whereas other may not. He gave the example of different

successes of two designed physics courses which are PSSC Physics and Project Physics. It

was found from a survey of American Institute of Physics that 25 % percent of students

earned bachelor degrees in 1983-84 had taken PSSC Physics in high school, and 12 % had

taken Project Physics (Pallrand & Lindenfield as cited in Brekke, 1994).

33

PhysicsAchievement

Student AbilityQuantitativeVerbal

Sex of students

Home Background(Socio-educational level)Father’s occupationFather’s educationMother’s educationBooks in home

School CharacteristicsAverage home backgroundSchool TypeAverage student attitudeAverage student abilitySingle-sex / coeducational

Student attitudeDiffuculty of scienceGoodnes of scienceEnjoyment of schoolAttitude to a carrier of science


General

Here are some general founding that some researchers included in their studies about

factors affecting physics achievement of students. I chose the ones having schematic

representations of results in order to look at the problem in a general point of view.

Young and Fraser (1992) formed a model for sex differences in science achievement,

home background, student ability, student attitudes and school characteristics as shown in

Figure 1. In their study, in multilevel analysis they chose the students’ physics achievement as

dependent variable and students’ differences as independent variables. Moreover, they found

that socio-educational level and verbal ability of students were found not to be significant

contributors towards the model; however, it is nice to see the schematic representation of

relations of independent variables and achievement in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Model for sex differences in science achievement, home background, student

ability, student attitudes and school characteristics (Young & Fraser, 1992)

34

Classical Mechanics Achievement

Math Skill Score Sex

D.O.E.Test score(preconceptions about mechanics)

Reasoning Score


According to the study of Champagne et al., the factors influencing the learning of

classical mechanics were like in Figure 2. According to this study, the most effective factor

influencing the learning of classical mechanics was the mathematics skill score of students.

Reasoning score and D.O.E test scores (preconceptions about mechanics) were found to be

the other effective factors in this study.

Figure 2. Model of Factors Influencing the Learning of Classical Mechanics

Another model developed for mechanics achievement was of Eryılmaz and Tatlı

(1999). In their study, they constructed a causal model for mechanics achievement of

university students as shown in Figure 3.

35

Mechanics Achievement

Cumulative GPA

Diagnostic Test Score

Science Logic Test Score

Science Score in UEE

Lycee Certificate Score

Math. Course Score

NewtonianPhysics

ScienceExperience

Math Aptitude


Figure 3. Causal Model for Mechanics Achievement (Eryılmaz & Tatlı, 1999)

According to this study, the most effective variable on mechanics achievement was

Newtonian Physics with a correlation coefficient of 0.71. Science experience was the second

most effective variable but it had a relatively much smaller correlation coefficient of 0.33.

Surprisingly, math aptitude was found as the least effective one among them. Other founding

of the study was that all three variables were found to influence the variations of other

variates as shown in the Figure 3.

For instruction of introductory physics courses, Redish and Steinberg (1999) pointed

out three questions that need to be answered and taken into account. The questions were:

i) What is involved in understanding and using physics?

ii) What do students bring to physics classes?

iii) How do students respond to physics instruction?

They also asserted that students’ concepts and appropriate cognitive attitudes are

important to solve complex problems of physics.

36


Group Interview

Beside the literature review results about factors affecting physics achievement, to see

the event by frames of Turkish students a group interview was constructed with 51 students

from an Anatolian high school in Ankara. Indeed, this is a small number but it is worth for to

feel myself very good due to seeing some parallelization of these students’ ideas with results

of literature review and what is more to see the plus items of the event.

The group interview was constructed with two classrooms of Mehmet Emin Resulzade

Anatolian High School in Ankara. This school is accepted as one of the good public high

schools in the city. Students can enter the school by having a certain score from nationwide

Examination of Secondary Education Associations (OKS: Ortaöğretim Kurumları Sınavı).

One of the classes the group interview was constructed was of grade 9 with 28 students and

the other one was of grade 10 with 23 students. Two classes’ physics teachers were different

people. Therefore, it would affect students’ answers; it would be healthier to compare their

responses if their physics teachers were the same person.

The directions and steps to be followed during the group interview were written on a

paper (included in Appendix) and given to two student teachers who were attending lessons of

that school for practice course of METU, SSME544. Group interview was started first by

asking students that “What is the most important factor that affects your physics achievement

in your opinion?” It was preferred as asking the most important factor because otherwise

students can say whatever comes to their minds but the aim of the first part of interview was

that to get answers about factors which students mostly care and found important. Students

who wanted to talk were allowed to talk one by one and their factor was written on the board

and so it was provided not to repeat same things but to skim new ones. But it was important at

that time not to say something that affects students’ views or not to direct them.

37


In 10th grade class the factors that students said that they are most affecting ones for

their physics achievements are:

Systematic self-studying,

Listening the lesson in class time,

Too much problem solving.

I think that those students gave more general answers and may be the situation that

10th grade students in Turkish high schools take physics if they choose to be in science branch

affect their attitudes and so they may see the problem of achieving physics only depends on

their own effort due to feeling of self-responsibility.

In 9th grade class students said more things about most important factors that affect

their physics achievement. They said that these were affecting factors of their physics

achievement:

Memorization of formulas,

Being lack of enough lesson time per week,

Teachers’ loving the lesson and teaching with passion and love,

Teachers’ telling physics with explaining the logic of the subjects,

Incapacity of teachers,

Not proving the concepts as scientifically,

Not enjoying attending lessons,

Students’ not loving lessons,

Not doing enough experiments,

Insufficient example problems,

Mathematics in physics ,

Geometry in physics.

38


From these answers one may think that those students were not pleasant of their

physics teacher. 9th grade is the first year in Turkish education system that physics is taught as

a separate lesson so, these students are first met with physics as a separate branch and

possibility of having previous negative attitudes towards physics was low for them. Moreover,

the fact that they said not loving and enjoying lessons were affecting factors of their

achievement implies that they faced with this situation in their class and started to gain

negative attitudes towards physics. They also said many factors about the teachers’ role and

may be those can be accepted as their complaints. Indeed, all factors they said are important

and really effective as mentioned in literature review part. Different from all branches of 10th

grade students, 9th grade students take physics as compulsory and introductory whether they

may continue their education in language, literature or social sciences branches. Hence,

physics is a little step that has to be passed for them. So, they may have different answers

about achieving physics than science students in 10th grade who should achieve physics to

enter a good university whatever the conditions are.

In the second part of the group interview, some listed factors taken from the results of

literature review were asked as one by one to class to see whether how many students were

thinking that these factors were affecting or not. One factor was asked and wanted from

students who agree on its effect to hold their hands. The total numbers of agreeing students

were noted under each factor on the direction sheet by the student teacher. The percentages of

each class and total students agreeing on listed factors about environment, students and

teachers are shown in Table 4, Table 5 and Table 6 respectively.

39


Table 4

Percentage Distributions of Students’ Responses to The Factors Affecting Physics

Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Environment.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Factor % of 9th Grade Students % of 10th Grade Students % of Total

Curriculum 46.4 0 35.3

Classroom Climate 35.7 52.2 43.1

Evaluation Type 89.3 0 55

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Table 5


Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Students

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Factor % of 9th Grade Students % of 10th Grade Students % of Total

Mathematics ability 42.9 52.2 47.1

Problem solving ability 3.6 69.6 33.3

Visuo-spatial ability 3.6 39.1 19.6

Language ability 0 34.8 15.7

Misconceptions 10.7 missing -

Daily experiences 7.1 30.4 17.6

Intrinsic Motivation 96.4 100 98

Extrinsic Motivation 100 100 100

Attitudes towards physics 67.9 26.1 49

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

40


Table 6


Achievement in Group Interview-Factors about Teachers.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Factor % of 9th Grade Students %of 10th Grade Students % of Total

Language Usage 100 missing -

Field Knowledge 100 100 100

Enthusiasm 57.1 100 76.5

Relations with students 89.3 26.1 60.8

Awaking interest-curiosity 71.4 13.4 45.1

Personal characteristics 42.9 34.8 39.2

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Factors of family background, social environment, method of instruction, gender were

asked to students but because none of students in both classes hold their hands for them these

factors are not taken into the tables. Also the factor of school type was not asked because it

was found that students had never been educated in a different type of school when they asked

at the beginning.

Implications and Discussions

After reading and spending too much time on trying to grasp the results and

correlations of factors affecting physics achievement and doing a small application in a group

of Turkish high school students, there occur some links and gaps, causes and effects, answers

and new questions on my mind about their projection to physics education in Turkish high

schools.

Before starting to this study I have some idea about the subject due to my own

experiences of being a student who were taught physics both in high school and university. It

is true that every one strains the new information according to his/her brain filter and the

40


acceptable ones are easy to be left afterwards. Therefore, the implications I notice by reading

the literature would probably go parallel with my thoughts. Hence, someone might reach on

different implications by this literature review.

Researchers are generally look for the reasons or obstacles of achievement in areas

that are student related most of the time and they may think that if there are something enables

their learning this should be due to their some deficiencies. Misconceptions, mathematical

skills, visual skills, cognitive development, experiences, background etc are all examples of

those. However, it should not be forgotten that in life every one of us responsible for the same

things and common values whatever our nation, language, colour are and there are always

various ways of telling those same things to different people of us. Therefore, students should

not be much blamed for their differences and it would be better to talk about narrator and

his/her appropriate way of narration for different audience. I mean that teachers may be more

worth for being researched about their effect on physics achievement of students. What is a

pity that researches about teacher effect is considerably in less number when compared with

student effect.

Effect of teacher characteristics on students’ achievement can be extended to very large

limits, such that students can be highly motivated and go beyond their limits whatever their

deficiencies are as indicated in related literature review. I remembered from a film of real

story in America that the enthusiasm of a mathematics teacher turned out to be a great

succession in nationwide higher mathematics examination of all their students in a class

previously known as troubles of Garfield High School.

As indicated in the literature review, effective teachers differ by well knowledge of

profession and pedagogy. In this point of view, the responsibility of teacher training

associations in Turkey is very vital. Therefore, education faculties and teacher training high

schools should do more on training effective teachers. But, it is a fact that learning is

changing behavior of individual according to information, not only knowing or repeating it.

41


Hence, the spirit of the event should be occurred by providing or selecting willing and

enthusiastic teachers with some necessary processes. Field of teacher training can be accepted

as urgent need of research not only for effective physics teaching but also for all Turkish

Education system.

While considering the factors related with students, there is not much things that are

able to be altered by educators. General and cognitive characteristics are like that. However,

by considering these characteristics of students suitable instructional methods and tools can be

developed. Books, laboratories, experiment set-ups, instructional software are all needed to be

worked on so by. In Turkey, Ministry of Education and a special association for controlling of

textbooks, curriculum and other instructional materials: Talim Terbiye Kurulu are working for

this aim but this would be strengthen by more collaborative work with education faculties in

the universities.

For meaningful and effective learning of physics conceptual learning is very

important. It is usual that students mostly care the grade they will have so that while studying

they spend time for doing practical things which can be useful for getting high points in their

exams. Researchers found that students prefer to spend time for memorizing science

vocabulary or factual information rather than trying to achieve conceptual understanding

(Anderson & Roth as cited in Barlia & Beeth, 1999; Blumenfeld & Meece as cited in Barlia &

Beeth, 1999; Tobbin & Gallagher as cited in Barlia & Beeth, 1999). In Turkey, evaluation in

physics lessons are mostly done with classical type written exams composed of problems with

mathematical solutions, using concept questions are in the initiative of teachers. The

importance of concept formation is distinct in physics achievement for remediation of

misconceptions and providing meaningful learning. So, in order to direct our students on

conceptual learning, evaluation methods used in Turkish high schools should be altered as

suitably for evaluation of concept learning. Moreover, the effect of standardized achievement

tests was found as negative in a similar point of view. Turkish educators should work on the

42


better evaluation methods which have characteristics of being not threatening of students,

giving importance to evaluation of process and development and being adequate to assessing

determined objectives of our physics courses.

It is obvious that curriculum is the corner stone or starting point of all the things done

for increasing Turkish students’ physics achievement. Without a suitable curriculum, all

availabilities, facilities, good intensions and enthusiasm of teachers would probably vanish.

While I was attending physics lessons as student teacher in my practice courses, I observed

that teachers were put in a situation that they must skip the story of the events fast and solve

more and more problems especially ones that are similar to asked ones in University Entrance

Exam. Students were also caring for the UEE and not for learning science. Their attitudes on

science may probably root from this. Moreover, providing Turkish students with better

motivation and attitudes on science is one of the most important points for training

innovations making scientist, engineers, doctors etc. Moreover, it is found in the literature

review that curriculum that depends on inquiry and conceptual understanding work better than

others. Therefore, working on developing a suitable physics curriculum which have

characteristics of giving importance on building scientific way of thought on students,

awaking interest and positive attitudes on sciences and being suitable for effective instruction

with conceptual understanding for Turkish students is a duty of our researchers.

Again for the other factors about environment i.e. school type the duty is of

government and ministry of education. It is found that big high schools with better conditions

are more effective in education (Anonymous, 2007). What is more, if it is needed single sex

education would also be allowed because their efficiency can be bigger than coeducations.

Again because of the need of Turkey, vocational schools quality especially should be made

higher. In the literature review, their successes are found as the worst however, they are

important for industrial, technical, commercial and for many fields of country.

43


The result of group interview showed parallel result found in the literature an its most

important implication is that there should be more studies done on factors related with

teachers. Percentages of students agree on the effect of their teachers’ different characteristics

on their achievement is found as relatively high when compared with other factors.

Briefly, biggest result of this study is the reminding the roles and responsibilities of

our researchers, educators, education faculties, teachers and all other necessary people to

improve achievement of physics in Turkish high schools.

44


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Appendix

Direction Sheet Given to Student Teachers for Application of Group Interview

Öğrencilere öncelikle “fizik dersi başarınızı etkileyen en önemli faktör sizce nedir?” sorusu

yöneltilir ve el kaldıranlara söz hakkı verilerek söylenen faktör tahtaya yazılır.

Örneğin öğrenci “matematik” der ise bu yazılıp “başka bir düşüncesi olan?” diyerek farklı

faktörler taranır.

Bu sırada herhangi bir yönlendirme yapılmaz.

2.kısımda öğrencilere bazı faktörler sırayla söylenir ve bu söylenen faktörün başarılarını

etkilediğini düşünenlerin el kaldırması istenir. Toplam el kaldıranların sayısı her faktörün

yanına yazılır (sınıf mevcudu ve kaçıncı sınıf olduğu not edilmeli).

Söylenecek faktörler:

-Matematik bilgisi

-Problem çözme yeteneği

-Görsel yetenek

-Dil yeteneği

-Kavram yanılgıları (terimin ne olduğu biraz açıklanabilir belki öğrenciler kavram

yanılgısının ne olduğunu bilmiyorlardır).

-Günlük deneyimler

-Öğrenci iç motivasyonu

-Öğretmenin öğrenciye sağladığı dış motivasyon

-Aile-sosyal çevre

-Cinsiyet

-Fizik dersine karşı tutum (sevgi-ilgi-önyargılar)

-Ders metodu (lab.da deney yapmak yada problem çözme vb. etkiliyor mu?)

50


-Öğretmenin kullandığı dil (dili etkili kullanması, kelimeleri doğru seçmesi, anlaşılır

açıklama)

-Öğretmenin alan bilgisi

-Öğretmenin heves-istekliliği

-Öğretmenin öğrencilerle ilişkisi

-Öğretmenin merak uyandırması(fiziğin uygulamalarını anlatması-günlük yaşamla

ilişkilendirmesi vb).

-Öğretmenin kişisel özellikleri (cinsiyeti, karizması, giyimi vb.)

-Sınav türü (test, klasik yazılı vb.)

-Müfredat (konular ve sıralamalarındansa bir konu için ayrılan ders saatinin yeterliliği

sorulabilir, çok hızlı yada yavaş mı işleniyor, dersi anlayabiliyorlar mı?)

-Genel Sınıf atmosferi

-Okul türü ( okul değişikliği yapan biri varsa sorulmalı)

Öğrencilere öğretmenin fizik dersi başarılarını nasıl etkilediği sorulabilir.(eğer öğretmenin

etkilediğini söylerlerse)

Varsa kendi düşüncelerini söylemek isteyen not alınır.

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factors affecting physics achievement

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