Using disciplinary perspectives to refine conceptions of the "real world"

TL;DR

This study explores how students in a physics for life sciences course connect physics to their real-world experiences, emphasizing the importance of disciplinary perspectives in understanding these connections.

Contribution

It introduces a nuanced approach to assessing students' real-world connections by considering their disciplinary backgrounds in biology and chemistry.

Findings

Students rarely think of physics in daily life.

Students make diverse connections to the real world.

Disciplinary expertise influences how students relate physics to their experiences.

Abstract

It has been reported that students often leave the introductory physics classroom believing that physics is less connected to the real world than when they entered. In this paper we aim to complicate that narrative by considering students' experiences in an introductory physics for the life-sciences course that leverages students' disciplinary expertise in biology and chemistry as they learn physics. In a case study of three students, we probed the role of physics in their lives to challenge the typical interpretation of PER attitudinal and epistemological measures that aim to assess how students connect physics to their lives outside of the classroom. Although we find that our life-science students' rarely think of physics in their everyday lives, they make a variety of connections to the real world. We argue that in order to reflect students' rich disciplinary experiences, our understanding of how students connect physics to life outside the classroom needs to be nuanced or expanded.