The period of transition for students from school to university is of great importance however it is also potentially fraught with difficulties. Incoming students are faced with a study environment very different to anything they have known before and often face a steep learning curve of new study skills and learning methods in order to keep afloat. Whilst these factors are well recognised and have been addressed in literature there is a growing recognition of the fact that how students perceive their chosen subject has a large impact on how they perform. In fact it has been suggested that students‟ expectations of a subject may be better predictors of performance in tertiary education than the previous performance of students in school examinations.
This article looks at the application of the CLASS (Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science) Survey at the University of Edinburgh and in selected schools across the UK. The survey allows the opinions and perspectives of students to be compared to those of expert physicists and thus the students‟ levels of expert-like thinking to be gauged. At the University of Edinburgh the first year physics class comprising of both Physics students and others taking physics as a complementary course were surveyed before teaching began and again at the end of first year. In schools students were surveyed towards the end of their last year of school.
