BENCHMARKING THE NUM ERACY AND EXPECTATIO NS OF FIRST YEAR PHYSICS T ECHNIKON STUDENTS AS PART OF A NEW RESEARCH-BASED TEACHING INTERVENTION

First time entering students to the Faculty of Applied Sciences at the Cape T echnikon are characterised by having poor numeracy and problem solving skills coupled with poor attitudes to learning Physics, which is perceived to be a formula-driven, mathematical discipline. In response to this situation and in the light of declining p ass rates among Physics 1 students at the Cape Technikon, a new teaching strategy for the first year Physics course was introduced in which multi-representational problem solving approaches were explicitly developed, providing an underlying foundation for the physics content. This paper describes measurements of students initial levels of numeracy and their attitudes to learning Physics, the teaching intervention implemented, and a brief overview of the evaluation of this approach. It was found that more s tudents were able to appropriately use the mathematical formulae needed to numerically solve physics problems after progressing through a series of non-mathematical representations of the particular problem situation. Post course testing also showed a shif t towards a more positive view of learning physics which also manifested itself in a higher pass rate in the Physics 1 course. Possible consequences for teaching physics at tertiary institutions in South Africa are also discussed