Many instructional physics labs are shifting to teach experimentation skills, rather than to demonstrate or confirm canonical physics phenomena. Our previous work found that many students engage in questionable research practices in attempts to confirm the canonical physics phenomena, even when confirmation is explicitly not the goal of the lab. This exploratory study aimed to answer three research questions: (RQ1) What are students’ expectations about the purpose of labs when they enter introductory physics?, (RQ2) How do their prior experiences shape those expectations?, (RQ3) In what ways do those expectations relate to their engagement in questionable research practices? Through open-response surveys, we found that students overwhelmingly expressed confirmatory beliefs about the purpose of labs. Through interviews, we found that students’ prior lab experiences were also overwhelmingly confirmatory, despite varying degrees of structure. We then used video of individual groups to explore the ways in which questionable research practices manifest through confirmatory expectations. We confirm previous work that students’ confirmatory expectations can lead them to engage in questionable research practices, but find that these behaviors occur despite instructional messaging about an alternative purpose. Our analyses also suggest that engagement in questionable research practices is more frequent than the previous results indicated through analysis of submitted lab notes. These results further illuminate issues with traditional labs, but suggest that the confirmatory goals, perhaps more so than high structure, are problematic.

中文翻译：

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确认期望对入门实验室中学生的实验决定有何影响

许多教学物理实验室正在转移以教授实验技能，而不是演示或确认规范的物理现象。我们以前的工作发现，即使确认显然不是实验室的目标，许多学生仍在尝试进行有问题的研究实践，以确认规范的物理学现象。这项探索性研究旨在回答三个研究问题：（RQ1）学生进入入门物理学时对实验室目的的期望是什么？，（RQ2）他们先前的经历如何塑造这些期望？，（RQ3）用什么方式这些期望与他们参与可疑的研究实践有关吗？通过开放式调查，我们发现学生以压倒性多数表达了对实验室目的的确认信念。通过采访 我们发现，尽管结构有所不同，但学生以前的实验室经验也得到了证实。然后，我们使用各个小组的视频来探索可验证的研究实践通过确认性期望表现出来的方式。我们确认了以前的工作，即学生的肯定期望会导致他们从事可疑的研究实践，但发现尽管有关于替代目的的指导性信息，但这些行为仍会发生。我们的分析还表明，参与有问题的研究实践的频率要比以前对提交的实验记录进行分析所表明的结果更为频繁。这些结果进一步阐明了传统实验室的问题，但表明确定性目标可能有问题，而不仅仅是高度结构化的目标。