The Effectiveness of the Dialectical-Empirical Approach on Academic Ambition Among Physics Students at the College of Education

Abstract

The current research aimed to determine the effectiveness of the experimental-argumentative approach on the academic ambition of students in the Physics Department at the College of Education. This was achieved by testing the following null hypothesis: "There are no statistically significant differences (at the 0.05 level) between the mean scores on the academic ambition scale of the experimental group students—who studied the Optics Laboratory course using the experimental-argumentative approach—and the mean scores of the control group students—who studied the same course using the conventional method."

The research was delimited to second-year students in the Physics Department at the College of Education (Ibn Al-Haytham), University of Baghdad, during the 2025–2026 academic year, specifically focusing on the practical experiments of the second-year Optics Laboratory course. The study sample consisted of 54 male and female students divided into two groups: a control group (27 students) and an experimental group (27 students). Equivalence between the two groups was established regarding chronological age (in months), intelligence, first-semester grades in the Optics Laboratory course, and initial levels of academic ambition.

Conducting the research required the researcher to prepare lesson plans to guide instruction for both the experimental and control groups. Additionally, a scale was required to measure the students' level of academic ambition; the researcher developed a scale comprising five dimensions, with each dimension consisting of 10 items—resulting in a total of 50 items—and verified its psychometric properties. Upon completing the research experiment, the researcher analyzed the data using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS).

The results indicated that students in the experimental group—taught using the dialectical-experimental approach—outperformed students in the control group—taught using the conventional method—on the academic ambition scale. Based on these findings, the researcher also offered a set of recommendations and suggestions.