Phenomenographic study of students’ problem solving approaches in physics
Laura N. Walsh, Robert G. Howard, and Brian Bowe
Physics Education Research Group, School of Physics, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin Street, Dublin 8, Ireland
Physical Review Special Topics Physics Education Research
Received 28 February 2007; published 12 December 2007
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.
©2007 The American Physical Society
URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRSTPER/v3/e020108
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.3.020108
PACS: 01.40.Fk
(Laura Walsh flew in from Ireland to attend the 2005 Foundations and Frontiers of Physics Education Research meeting, for those who might recognize the name...)
