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Do you think physics is mainly a list of formulas to memorise? Or a small set of ideas that connect, which you can reason from? Researchers have measured how students answer questions like this, and how a physics course changes their answers. A 2015 meta-analysis found an uncomfortable pattern: most courses make students think less like physicists, not more. Here is what the study did, what it found and what you can take from it.
What question did the study ask?
Adrian Madsen, Sarah McKagan and Eleanor Sayre published How physics instruction impacts students' beliefs about learning physics: A meta-analysis of 24 studies in Physical Review Special Topics, Physics Education Research. They asked three questions: how physics teaching affects students' beliefs, when physics majors develop expert-like beliefs, and whether beliefs are linked to how much students learn.
What was measured?
The studies used two surveys. One is the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey, or CLASS, developed by Adams, Wieman and colleagues in 2006 and validated with more than 5,000 students. The other was the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX). Students agree or disagree with statements such as these, taken from the paper:
"A significant problem in learning physics is being able to memorize all the information I need to know."
"Knowledge in physics consists of many pieces of information each of which applies primarily to a specific situation."
"If I get stuck on a physics problem on my first try, I usually try to figure out a different way that works."
Each answer is scored by whether it matches how physicists answer. A class's "shift" is its average percentage of expert-like answers at the end of the course minus the percentage at the start. The review included published studies of undergraduate physics courses in the United States and Canada only.
What did it find?
According to the paper's full text, the abstract's main conclusion is that "in typical physics classes, students' beliefs deteriorate or at best stay the same". The average shifts by teaching approach were:
Courses focused on building models of the physical world: +9.3 percentage points.
Courses with an explicit focus on developing expert-like beliefs: +8.5.
Courses with some attention to beliefs: +0.7.
Ordinary courses, traditional or reformed: -3.7.
The two focused approaches were significantly better than ordinary courses. Class size also mattered: small classes (12 to 38 students) averaged +5.4, medium classes (42 to 100) +0.9 and large classes (115 to 448) -1.7. Courses for non-science majors and future elementary teachers tended to show gains, while large calculus-based courses tended to show losses.
Two other findings stand out. Physics majors arrive at university with more expert-like beliefs than other students and keep them, which the authors read as courses "selecting students who already have strong beliefs, rather than supporting students in developing strong beliefs". And incoming beliefs had a small positive correlation with learning gains on mechanics concept tests; most correlations reported were between about 0.2 and 0.3.
What does it not show?
The data were uneven. Small classes, model-building courses and courses for non-science majors often came together. The authors say it is "unclear" whether gains came from the teaching method, the small class size or the student group.
Beliefs are self-reported. A student can tick "I try a different way" and still not do it.
Correlation is not cause. Students with expert-like beliefs learned a little more, but that does not prove changing beliefs raises marks.
Only North American college courses were included. No Indian school or coaching data.
What does it mean for students in India?
The belief that physics is a pile of formulas is rewarded in the short term by formula sheets and pattern-matching. This review suggests ordinary courses rarely fix it, so you may have to do it yourself:
Build models, not lists. For each chapter, write the two or three core ideas (for mechanics: Newton's laws, energy, momentum) and show how each formula follows from one of them.
Test a model against reality. Predict a result, then check it with a simple experiment or simulation. That is the habit model-building courses train.
When stuck, try a different approach. That CLASS statement describes a habit you can practise: if a force method fails, try energy.
Read about how physics works. The stories of the Force Concept Inventory and Hake's interactive engagement study show how physics teachers discovered that students could solve problems without understanding the ideas.
Testing predictions is easier when you can change one thing and see what happens. The Fermi Simulation Lab has interactive simulations for ideas that are easier to see than read, which suits a predict-then-check habit.
How to read a study like this
When a meta-analysis groups studies by teaching method, check whether the groups differ in other ways too. Here, the courses with the biggest gains were also small and often for non-science students. The authors point this out themselves, which is a sign of a careful paper. A claim like "modelling courses improve beliefs" is supported, but the reason might partly be class size.
Next step: take the chapter you are studying now and write, on one page, the two or three ideas every formula in it comes from.
