Surveying Kazakh high school students’ attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning with the Colorado learning attitudes about science survey

Abstract

Abstract The Colorado learning attitudes about science survey (CLASS) was given to 308 high school physics students in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where physics is taught every year through middle and high school. Student responses were tested using several different latent factor models: two based on those published in the recent literature and two new models developed through exploratory factor analysis. Four subscales containing 25 of the original CLASS items were found to be internally reliable and cross-culturally valid. These are Conceptual Connections, Personal Interests, Sense-Making/Effort, and Personal Application and Relation to the Real World. Scores on Conceptual Connections correlated significantly with grade level; Sense-Making correlated most with exam scores; and Personal Applications and Relation to Real World scale best differentiated males and females, where males score significantly higher. Our findings are compared to those in previous international reports.