Impact of traditional or evidence-based active-engagement instruction on introductory female and male students’ attitudes and approaches to physics problem solving

Melanie Good,Chandralekha Singh,Alexandru Maries

doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.15.020129

Melanie Good, Chandralekha Singh + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.15.020129

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Abstract

Female students value engaging in the use of drawings and scratchwork while problem solving more than male students.

Highlights

Instructional goals of many introductory physics courses include helping students develop expertlike problem solving skills while learning physics concepts
We investigated the impact of instruction on attitudes and approaches to problem solving as measured by the AAPS survey administered both at the beginning and end of semester long introductory physics courses at a large research university in the United States
We compared the AAPS survey scores based upon method of instruction and gender of students, and examined data for correlations between the AAPS survey scores and performance on conceptual surveys (FCI and Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM)) or final exams

Summary

Introduction

Instructional goals of many introductory physics courses include helping students develop expertlike problem solving skills while learning physics concepts. Physics education researchers have been involved in investigating expert-novice differences in physics problem solving, how students develop their problem solving skills, and instructional strategies to make students perform more expertlike tasks, see, e.g., Refs. Chi et al [3] conducted research showing differences in

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