The effects of problem-solving strategies on students' achievement, achievement motivation and attitude in the cooperative learning groups in physics teaching

The aim of this study was to find out the effect of the teaching of thecooperative problem-solving strategies, on students? achievement in physics,achievement motivation, attitude towards problem solving, the problem-solvingstrategies used by students, their gender difference and their level of achievement inusing the cooperative problem-solving strategies.The methodology used in this study was pre-test and post-test control groupexperimental design. The sample consisted of two groups of second year uppersecondary school students studying physics in the fall term 2005-2006 academicyear. Cooperative problem-solving strategies were used with the experiment group(the strategy teaching group) and the control group was instructed with traditionalteaching methods. The data was collected by using Physics Achievement Test, TheScale of Problem-Solving Attitude Towards Physics, Achievement Motivation Scaleand problem solving sheets. Variance Analysis and t-Test were used in the analysisof the data obtained in this study.The results indicate that teaching through cooperative problem-solvingstrategies has a positive effect on the students? achievement in physics, their attitudetowards problem-solving and achievement motivation. It is found that teaching ofproblem-solving strategies is not related to gender difference and that the more thelevel of the students? achievement in using the cooperative problem-solvingstrategies increases, the more the students use strategies.Key Words: Problem-Solving Strategies, Cooperative Learning, Attitude,Achievement Motivation, Physics Education.