Students' Opinions of Physicists' Beliefs about Physics Versus Their Own

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS)$^{1,2}$ is a 42 statement questionnaire designed to elicit student beliefs about physics. Previous studies show that many students do not agree with the expert responses, raising the question of whether students know how experts would respond. In this study, students were asked to choose their opinion (from a 5 point Likert scale) and their opinion of what a physicist would believe. Students from three introductory physics classes (courses for engineers and physics majors, pre-meds, or non-science majors) were surveyed and 11 students were interviewed to provide a deeper understanding. Results from the surveys and interviews will be presented. Also considered is how students' opinions of physicists' beliefs are related to gender, current physics course, and previous physics experiences and how these opinions change throughout the semester. 1. W.K. Adams, K.K. Perkins, N. Podolefsky, M. Dubson, N.D. Finkelstein and C.E. Wieman, ``A new instrument for measuring student beliefs about physics and learning physics: the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey'', Phys. Rev ST: Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 1, 010101 (2006). 2. See \underline {http://per.colorado.edu} for relevant papers.