PHYSICS PROBLEM SOLVING

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In science education, much of the early research in the cognitive psychology
tradition was done in physics problem solving by Jill Larkin and her associates at
Carnegie-Mellon University. She compared the problem solving performance of expert
problem solvers (professors in physics) with that of novices (beginning students in
physics courses) (Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon, 1980). This seminal article is
cited in almost all other research papers on physics problem solving. Students were
given training in qualitative analysis and “chunking.” Chunking is a process that allows
experts to combine minor steps into a single procedure and thereby arrive quickly at a
solution. Larkin sets a research agenda to enable students to solve problems in physics
more effectively: “1. observe in detail what experts do in solving problems; 2. abstract
from these observations the processes which seem most helpful; 3. teach these processes
explicitly to students” (Larkin, 1979; p. 285). By observing what experts do, procedural
"chunks" are decomposed into smaller more manageable, and teachable, steps.
The work of Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser (1981) used physics problems to
investigate the organization of knowledge. "Results from sorting tasks and protocols
reveal that experts and novices begin their problem representations with specifically
different problem categories, and completion of the representations depends on the
knowledge associated with the categories. For, the experts initially abstract physics
principles to approach and solve a problem representation, whereas novices base their
representations and approaches on the problem's literal features" (p. 121)
A problem representation is a cognitive structure corresponding to a problem,
constructed by a solver on the basis of his or her subject-related knowledge and its
organization. The quality of a problem representation influences the ease with which a