Development of Competencies in Physics during the First Year at University

• Applicant: Dr. David Woitkowski
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393022464

Evaluating the effectiveness of the study programs at German Universities is an important aim of current education research. In this context several problems concerning the physics and physics teachers courses become evident: Alike in the other STEM fields dropout rates are overly high while performance problems and failed classes are among the most relevant causes. The introductory phase can be identified of the most critical time period. Studies concerning prospective teachers show a gap between the most and least proficient groups of students which grows over time. The applicant was able to show that even after a reasonable duration of study up to one third of the students show concerning low levels of content knowledge. Current improvement measures are typically only founded normatively and rarely make use of empirical insights.The present project aims to build a broader empirical basis of information about learning physics during the first year of study. A longitudinal survey of the complexity of the students' content knowledge is combined with a survey of the problem schemes used when working on complex problems in physics (e.g. excercise sheets). With these data the development process in the introductory phase can be clarified and key determinants can be identified.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants