written by Wendy K. Adams and Carl E. Wieman

Researchers have created several tools for evaluating conceptual understanding as well as students' attitudes and beliefs about physics; however, the field of problem solving is sorely lacking a broad use evaluation tool. This missing tool is an indication of the complexity of the field. The most obvious and largest hurdle to evaluating physics problem solving skills is untangling the skills from the physics content knowledge necessary to solve problems. We are tackling this problem by looking for the physics problem solving skills that are useful in other disciplines as well as physics. We report on the results of a series of interviews comparing physics students' skills when solving physics problems with their anonymous completion of the problem solving instrument.

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Published January 30, 2007
Last Modified January 29, 2011

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