  Physics laboratory courses have been generally acknowledged as an important
component of the undergraduate curriculum, particularly with respect to
developing students' interest in, and understanding of, experimental physics.
There are a number of possible learning goals for these courses including
reinforcing physics concepts, developing laboratory skills, and promoting
expert-like beliefs about the nature of experimental physics. However, there is
little consensus among instructors and researchers interested in the laboratory
learning environment as to relative importance of these various learning goals.
Here, we contribute data to this debate through the analysis of students'
responses to the laboratory-focused assessment known as the Colorado Learning
Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). Using a
large, national data set of students' responses, we compare students' E-CLASS
performance in classes in which the instructor self-reported focusing on
developing skills, reinforcing concepts, or both. As the classification of
courses was based on instructor self-report, we also provide additional
description of these course with respect to how often students engage in
particular activities in the lab. We find that courses that focus specifically
on developing lab skills have more expert-like postinstruction E-CLASS
responses than courses that focus either on reinforcing physics concepts or on
both goals. Within first-year courses, this effect is larger for women.
Moreover, these findings hold when controlling for the variance in
postinstruction scores that is associated with preinstruction E-CLASS score,
student major, and student gender.
