Students’ Academic Performance in Physics 1: Basis for Teaching and Learning Enhancement

Abstract

One of the primary goals in physics education is to identify potential and obstacles to student learning, and then to address these obstacles in a way that leads to more effective learning. These obstacles include factors that originate during instruction - such as instructional method as well as those that relate to students’ pre-instruction preparation, with mathematics skills being the most common factor. In this study, the measures of performance adopted are student grades on course exams that emphasized quantitative problem solving. The study examines students’ mathematics skills and their initial physics conceptual knowledge as factors that may underlie variations in student learning. Another objective of the study is to determine whether individual students’ performance are correlated with initial English communication skills. The most common way of detecting whether an improvement is achieved by a course is through measuring the students’ achievement in a test. Testing is generally thought of as a means of assessing the knowledge and skills students have acquired through learning. Test results in formative and summative assessments of students, provide vital information that could be the basis for the following: (a) assigning final course grade to a student; (b) distinguishing students’ strengths and weaknesses in a particular subject; (c) assessing student performance in class as a whole; and (d) improving teaching methods or techniques in carrying out a teacher’s day-to-day lessons; (e) assessing teachers’ needs in a certain program or curriculum; (f) allowing a teacher to make decisions at the beginning, and at the end of instruction; (g) evaluating the effectiveness of specific teaching methods; and (h) serving as one of the criteria upon which to evaluate a certain curriculum. The Physics performance of students in the test is affected and found significantly by the students’ pre-instruction preparation in Mathematics and English courses.

Keywords: academic achievement, University Physics, teaching and learning