Physics Graduate Students’ Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving

Abstract

Students’ attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can profoundly influence their motivation to learn and their development of expertise. We administered an Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS) survey to physics graduate students and analyzed their responses about problem solving in their own graduate level courses vs. problem solving in introductory physics. The physics graduate students’ responses to the survey questions were also compared with those of introductory students and physics faculty. Survey responses suggest that graduate students’ attitudes about graduate‐level problem solving sometimes has similar patterns to introductory‐level problem solving by introductory students.