Abstract
This paper describes ongoing research investigating student approaches to quantitative and qualitative problem solving in physics. This empirical study was conducted using a phenomenographic approach to analyze data from individual semistructured problem solving interviews with 22 introductory college physics students. The main result of the study is a hierarchical set of categories that describe the students' problem solving approaches in the context of introductory physics.
Highlights
This study presents a set of categories that describe the problem solving state of a set of novice college physics students
Two categories may have a common component, yet this serves to further define and relate the categories in terms of the variation in the approaches. An example of this can be seen between the scientific approach and the structured plug-and-chug approach: in each case, students focus on the concepts to guide their solution; they approach problem solving in different ways
The lowest hierarchical epistemic game, “transliteration to mathematics,” can be compared to the memory-based approach in that the students approach the problem by trying to find a solution pattern that seems to match the current problem. It was not the intention of the research presented here to investigate students’ use of mathematics, but rather to present a set of categories which allowed for a better description of novice problem solvers, the results produced by both sets of research serve to imply that these categories could be used to track student progress during a typical year of study of introductory physics
Summary
This study presents a set of categories that describe the problem solving state of a set of novice college physics students. This work is new within the context of the Irish and European education systems; parallels will be drawn with the United States education system and research carried out there. With these new categories of students’ initial approaches to problem solving, teaching and assessment practices may be developed to help students advance to higher hierarchical categories of problem solving. Over the past six years the school has introduced new pedagogical approaches including problem-based learning,[1,2] project-based learning,[3] and peer instruction[4] and this research will be used to inform these teaching practices, in particular the facilitation of group learning activities. This paper, sets out to answer the following research question: How do introductory physics students approach problem solving?
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