Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Beliefs about Learning Physics and Their Learning Achievement in Physics

Abstract

This study investigates pre-service teachers’ beliefs about learning physics and explores how beliefs correlate with learning achievement as evidenced by conceptual understanding and grades in a year-long physics course. To investigate beliefs about learning physics, 14 second-year pre-service teachers in a teacher training program in South Korea completed a Likert-style questionnaire called the Beliefs About Learning Physics Survey (BAPS). To measure learning achievement, final grades for the physic course were obtained and the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) was used to assess conceptual understanding. Analysis revealed that pre-service physics teachers’ beliefs about learning physics had a positive correlation with conceptual understanding but not with motivational beliefs. Students’ grades in physics had a positive correlation with cognitive beliefs, regardless of changes in pre- and post-test responses. Implications about how to utilize pre-service physics teachers’ beliefs about learning physics as an epistemological resource for teaching and learning physics are discussed.