The Effects of Problem Solving Strategies on Students’ Achievement, Attitude and Motivation

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of teaching of the problem solving strategies on the students’ physics achievement, strategy level, attitude, and achievement motivation. Experimental procedures were conducted on the tenth grade students in Turkey. Research data were collected with Physics Achievement Test, Surveys of Problem Solving Strategies, Problem Solving Attitude, and Achievement Motivation, and problem solving worksheets. During this study, problem solving strategies were applied to the experimental group by the cooperative learning method and to the control group by conventional teaching. The averages of the experimental group’s achievement, motivation, strategy level, and attitude were found to be higher than control group’s. According to the experimental data, gender didn’t effect the physics achievement of students. It was concluded that problem solving strategies was more effective in cooperative learning than conventional teaching.