Exploring The Students’ Attitude, Motivation And Self Efficacy In Physics Learning: A Study In The Universities Of Technology In Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to investigate the reality of physics curriculum/learning in the universities of technology in Taiwan. It should be noticed, university of technology (UT) in Taiwan is categorized to vocational education system. Therefore, in physics learning, the performance of UT students should be something different from general university (GU) students. This study involved a survey, comprised of four sets of questionnaires concerning attitude toward physics, learning motivation, self-efficacy and learning states were investigated. Four instruments (Motivation toward learning test, Attitude toward physics test, Self-efficacy about learning test, Learning states test) were adopted in this study. The participants in this study were 3031 freshmen, and were sampled randomly from 12 UT in Taiwan. Participants were categorized as three groups by their majors–electricity and machines group (EMG), information engineering group (IEG), and other engineering group (OEG). Furthermore, in order to explore the differences between GU students and UT students in physics learning, another 249 engineering college students from a mid-level general university were selected randomly as the contrast group (CG). After data analysis, some interesting research findings were discussed and will be suggested to the practice of physics curriculum design in university of technology. Background and Purpose The last three decades, contemporary educational reforms around the world have gradually emphasized the development of student’s abilities about scientific understanding, critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving. Student should be equipped with properly proficiency for a productive adult life in the rapidly changing world. For example, knowledge and skills from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the so-called STEM fields—are crucial to everyone, and all students should be educated to be “STEM-capable” 1 . However, there are many factors affecting students’ learning performance in school, such as students’ attitude, motivation, and self-efficacy. Motivation is a crucial factor affecting students’ learning in school. It can be defined as any process that initiates and maintains learning behavior. Motivation is important for learning because students can not learn unless they are motivated 2 . Therefore, motivation could be viewed as an essential pre-requisite and co-requisite for learning. Attitude can be considered as a learning outcome. It is also a important factor that affects learning 3 . Consequently, more positive student attitudes can be a factor in increasing enrolment in science course and amplifying learning science achievement 4 . So, it is important to understand the reality of student’s attitude toward physics in order to enhance their science learning achievement. Self-efficacy beliefs provide the foundation for human’s motivation, well-being and personal accomplishment 5 . People have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of difficulties unless they believe that their actions can produce the outcomes they desire. Generally, physics is P ge 15565.2 one of the subjects that students feel it is difficult to learn. If students have higher self-efficacy, they should be more confident to overcome the difficulties in physics learning. However, to date, there has been relatively little research conducted on exploring the performance of UT students in physics learning in Taiwan. Especially, physics is one of obligatory subjects for all engineering majors of UT students in Taiwan. Up to this point, there were few empirical studies in investigating the students’ perceptions of physics learning. In order to promote physics teaching/learning for UT—a vocational education system in Taiwan, the foci of this study were to explore the reality of students’ physics learning. In sum, the purpose of this study was to investigate the reality of physics curriculum/learning in the universities of technology in Taiwan. Furthermore, the students’ attitude toward physics, motivation and self-efficacy were analyzed too.