We study the case of Marya, a freshman engineering major who showed and spoke of a drastic shift in her feelings and approach to learning physics during an introductory course. For the first several weeks, she was anxiously manipulating equations without considering physical meaning, and she was terribly worried about being correct. By the end of…

Interviewed six first-year college students in an introductory physics course about their beliefs about physics. Characterized the students' beliefs about the structure of physics knowledge as isolated facts or a coherent system; content of physics knowledge as formulas or underlying concepts; and process of learning physics as receiving…

Explores, in the context of a debate about velocity from the author's high school physics class, how a perspective of students as having epistemological beliefs might influence a teacher's perceptions of students and intentions for instruction. (LZ)