Surveying college introductory physics students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving

TL;DR

This paper presents the development and validation of an attitudes and approaches to problem solving (AAPS) survey for physics students, revealing differences between students and experts and uncovering unexpected response trends.

Contribution

It introduces a validated AAPS survey tool and provides insights into students' attitudes and approaches compared to physics experts.

Findings

Students are less expert-like than faculty and PhD students.

Some survey responses show unexpected trends between students and faculty.

The survey offers a new way to assess attitudes towards physics problem solving.

Abstract

Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can greatly impact their actual problem solving practices and also influence their motivation to learn and ultimately the development of expertise. We developed and validated an attitudes and approaches to problem solving (AAPS) survey and administered it to students in the introductory physics courses in a typical large research university in the US. Here, we discuss the development and validation of the survey and analysis of the student responses to the survey questions in introductory physics courses. The introductory physics students' responses to the survey questions were also compared with those of physics faculty members and physics PhD students. We find that introductory students are in general less expert-like than the physics faculty members and PhD students. Moreover, on some AAPS survey questions, the responses of students and faculty have unexpected trends. Those trends were interpreted via in