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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 2, Article 1 (Dec., 2009) Naki ERDEMİR Determining students’ attitude towards physics through problem-solving strategy |
The following results are drawn from the evaluation of problem solving methods conducted on students in both groups and approaches.
Such results have shown that problem solving methods taught by a teacher to students had an important impact on development of positive attitude toward physics. Then, it was deduced that these students correctly used the evaluation of clues, finding better problem solving steps, realizing usage of wrong solution steps, exploration, alternative solutions, stopping when realizing a misunderstanding, explaining the procedures incorrectly, application of the ideas immediately and determining the equation. This is supported by other studies conducted by Hollabaugh (1995), Leonard, Dufrense and Mestre (1996) and McGowan (2008).
The study indicated that teaching the problem solving method to experimental groups was effective on knowledge and skill usage by the students in solving problems. This result is also supported by the studies conducted by Leonard, Dufrense and Mestre (1996) and Tao (2001).
It was concluded that the poor student attitudes toward physics in the control group was due to the lack of information, lack of problem solving skills, lack of self-confidence, using a formula incorrectly and lack of acting like experts while they solve physics problems.
Consequently, some of the advantages of this the method for the experimental group include helping students to build self confidence, meaningful learning, and awareness of how, where and for which problem to use knowledge and skills. Students in the experimental groups showed that they were much more interested in the physics lecture and developed positive attitude toward physics through problem solving knowledge and skill when this technique was taught.
