Statistical Approach in Tertiary Physics Laboratory: Effects on Student Achievement, Attitude, and Psychomotor Skills

Abstract

This study is on the effects of statistical supplementary materials for the General Laboratory information (GLI) of a physics first-year laboratory course offered at a leading university in the Philippines, to: (a) students’ attitudes toward rules on decimal place and significant digits calculations, accuracy and precision, and probability interval estimation; (b) students self-perception of mathematics-/statistics-related attitudes and anxiety; (c)students’ self-perception of the relevance of mathematics and statistics; (d) laboratory physics achievement; (e) knowledge of relevant statistical concepts; (f) students’ self-perception of their psychomotor domain skills; (g) associations between one-semester changes in students’ self-perception of attitudes and anxiety toward mathematics and statistics, on the other hand, and students’ start-of-semester self-perception of their psychomotor domain skills, on the other hand; and, (h) correlations between laboratory physics achievement, on the other hand, and the attitudes and self-perceptions considered in (a), (b), and ( c), on the other hand.

The holistic evaluation of the new materials, modifies based on authoritative guidelines and directed at developing statistical thinking, involved all 48 enrolled students and the two instructors of the course, and included the students’: attitude changes, sources of anxiety, and self-perceptions of these based on Osborne’s (1976) semantic differential scales and the Mathematics and Statistics Perception Scale (Cherney & Cooney, 2005); actual physical performance in certain assigned laboratory experiments; and, final course grades and responses in the start- and end-of-semester assessments on basic statistical knowledge.