Students come to their classes with their experiences as well as previous knowledge about physics concepts. Each student has different experiences which lead to variety of expectations, attitudes and beliefs (Im & Pak, 2004). Learners’ preconceptions and expectations affect their understandings. Also, identification of students’ expectations can play an important role in introductory college physics (Redish, Saul, & Steinberg, 1998). Physics Education Research Group at the University of Maryland conducted a study about students’ expectations and the effect of the course on changing these expectations. The results showed that, there is a significant gap between expert and novice students’ expectations (Redish, 2002). Research group named these views as ‘‘cognitive attitudes’’ or ‘‘expectations’’ which indicate their understanding of the process of learning physics and the structure of physics knowledge rather than indicating the content of physics itself (Redish & Steinberg, 1999). In the light of studies of Redish et al. (1998), our study investigates students’ expectations, attitudes and beliefs about introductory physics courses at METU (Middle East Technical University). Also, we explore to how students change their expectations from beginning to end of the one course semester. There has been some research about student expectations. Hammer (1994) searched the role of student expectations in university physics. He suggested three dimensions of beliefs: independence/authority, coherence/pieces and concepts/equations. Carey, Evans, Honda, Jay and Unger (1989) showed that many pre-college students have misconceptions about science and what should be included in a science class. Songer and Linn (1991) investigated middle school students’ beliefs as two categories: dynamic (science is interpretive, understandable, and integrated) and static (science knowledge is fixed, memorization and not corresponds to daily lives). Reif and Larkin (1991) compared and dedicated everyday cognitive expectations that cause difficulties in science classes. Örnek, Robinson, and Haugan (2008) investigated physics majors’ expectations, attitudes, and beliefs using modeling instruction and interactive engagement in an introductory physics course.

The population of the study will be introductory physics and physics education students at METU. There will be approximately 110 students, 80 from physics department, and 30 from physics education department. They take the same course from the same instructor. General physics course are given in two semester as mechanics and electromagnetic. The students, whom the survey will be applied, will be taking the electromagnetic introductory physics course. The MPEX Survey (Redish, et al., 1998) will be applied before and after the instruction to measure students’ expectations from this course. The test is composed of 34 five point Likert type questions from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Redish et al. stated that students’ expectation will be illuminated along six dimensions as independence, coherence, concepts, reality link, math link and effort.

Our aim is to measure student expectations before and after one semester introductory physics course. Based on the findings, it is aimed to give feedback to the instructor about students’ expectations. It will be stated that not only instructors’ expectations, but also students’ expectation should be taken into consideration. The introductory physics classes in METU are presented in lecturing format with traditionally designed laboratory sections. We assume that students’ expectations will deteriorate from favorable to unfavorable due to the instruction. Therefore, instructors should reconsider type of the method used in the classes. Giving feedback about change in the students’ expectations after the course may also contribute to the professional development of the instructors as stated in Marshal and Linder (2005).