Analyzing Cognitive or Non-Cognitive Factors Involved in the Process of Physics Problem Solving in an Everyday Context - An Effort for Sucessful Problem Solving in an Everyday Context -

In the previous study, six factors which could disturb students' problem solving in an everyday context were identified and discussed. In this study, teaching materials to help students overcome those disturbing factors for successful problem solving in an everyday context were developed and applied to twenty-nine grade 10 students, and the effects of teaching materials were analyzed. According to the analysis of the correlation between the performance in everyday context problem solving and the benefit from the teaching materials, it was found that students who received the help from the teaching materials showed better performance with statistical significance. And students noted that teaching materials were helpful for them to solve the physics problems. Analyzing the overall performance of students in solving the everyday context problem, students in the experimental group showed better performance than the control group and this performance difference was larger among low-score students in school science testing. However, these differences were not statistically significant because the sample size was small. And, based on the analysis of interviews with students, it was also found that some students who showed low performance might not receive help from the teaching materials because the materials were too complex to be read easily, or because the basic concepts needed to solve the problem were not understood. Therefore, the results obtained from the interviews will be used to design more effective teaching for problem solving in an everyday context.