Physics education students’ understanding of the concept of epistemology, ontology, and axiology

Abstract

Abstract One of the studies in the physics education curriculum at the undergraduate level is the philosophy of science (POS). This study aims to analyse the university students’ understanding of the concept of epistemology, ontology, and axiology. As the situation of COVID-19 pandemic, an online survey design was utilised in this research. The participants included 89 students who were majoring in Physics Education at a public university in Surabaya Indonesia. In the duration of the Spring Semester 2020, the research was conducted by giving an online test containing statements with a value range of one to ten and a questionnaire with one to five Likert scale. The data obtained were then analysed using quantitative descriptive analysis techniques and an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to achieve the results of the students’ perception of the philosophy of science. The findings indicated it was about 22% of the total participants had a lack of understanding of epistemological studies. Meanwhile, a total of 14.3% of them had a lack of understanding of the concept of ontology. The best result was the understanding of the concept of axiology, the physics education students achieved 91.2% in a good level. Turning to the result of EFA, it stated all items developed to measure the factor behind the structure scale with loading factor more than 0.4 with the overall reliability of more than .80. These findings provide an additional treasure of previous knowledge that rarely explores the concept of epistemology, ontology, and axiology in a specific manner.