Attitudinal Shift Toward Physics and Learning Physics among Biology Education Students

Abstract

This study examined changes in prospective biology teachers’ attitudes toward physics and physics learning before and after a basic physics course at IAIN Kerinci, Indonesia. Using a one group pre- and post-course survey design, the study involved 26 first-year biology education students who completed the Indonesian adaptation of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) before and after the course. The course covered six main topics: kinematics, dynamics, work and energy, momentum and impulse, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics. The overall percentage of favorable responses increased from 33.33% to 38.68%. However, this change was not statistically significant . A positive and significant shift with a moderate effect size was observed exclusively within the Real-World Connection category, indicating a more expert-like response pattern regarding the relevance of physics to everyday phenomena. The other CLASS categories showed no statistically significant pre–post differences. These findings suggest that students’ perceptions of physics relevance may change without corresponding significant changes across other dimensions of attitudes toward physics and physics learning. The study highlights the importance of instructional approaches that connect physics with everyday and biological phenomena while explicitly engaging students in conceptual reasoning and problem solving teacher education.