PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING

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is, by its very nature, research into applied social psychology. In this area of research,
rich, qualitative descriptions of groups of people are as important, if not sometimes more
important, than quantitative descriptions. People function in a social context, in this case
the cooperative group. The group dynamics, hard to quantify, are crucial to
understanding the group’s product and process. In an attempt to understand what
students in a problem-solving group actually do, I will make “rich descriptions” of the
problem solving groups. From these qualitative descriptions I will look patterns within
and between the groups.
Second, although the groups’ solutions consists of verbal statements, I will argue
that just counting types of statements students make is not a "fine-grained analysis."
While individual statements are important, and form the basis of the analysis, the larger
picture must also be considered. That is, the context of the statements must also be
described and understood. Each group functions in the context of its cooperative group
process, and each physics description, which is the product of the group, is jointly
constructed in the same context. I will look for patterns in the co-construction of the
argument that are a part of this problem-solving process. The emphasis is on the process
of co-constructing the problem solution as opposed to the product, namely the “correct”
answer.
These two features of this dissertation research suggested that I take this
qualitative case study approach to the research. The case study is a qualitative research
method in which the researcher explores a single entity, process, or phenomenon, and
uses a variety of data collection tools including qualitative descriptions and records (e.g.,
video or audio tapes) (Creswell, 1994; Strauss, 1987 ). For this research, the qualitative