The Development and Validation of Learning Attitudes about Physics (LAAP) Inventory

Abstract

Learning Attitudes about Physics (LAAP) inventory is an instrument designed to measure students’ beliefs about physics and learning physics. This instrument was psychometrically adapted from the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey or CLASS (Adams et al., 2006), resulting in three clusters or factors of empirically determined groupings of statements that are grounded on 132 Malaysian university physics students’ responses. The first factor, consisting of 10 items, reflects students’ attitude towards an interest in metacognition as evidenced in their affinity in thinking, problem solving, relating, and establishing relationships amongst variables. The second 3-item factor reflects students’ attitude towards learning physics, a composite view of what constitute the knowledge in physics, what step to take when the outcome in solving a problem is not as expected, and understanding physics formulas. Finally, a group of 3 items that forms the third factor reflects students’ attitude towards applying physics. The overall percentage mean for interest in metacogntion, learning physics, and applying physics are 73.19, 72.58, and 60.40 respectively. Using the two-third rule, the findings suggest that students have a rather positive attitude towards an interest in metacognition and learning physics while the attitude towards applying physics was less favourable. However, there were no significant differences between the males and females across the three factors.