| Summary: | Over the course of instruction, not only does most introductory physics students’ content knowledge evolve but their attitudes and approaches to problem solving are also likely to evolve. This change may depend on many factors including the curricula and pedagogies used, the degree to which instruction actively engages students in the learning process, as well as the gender of the students. While changes in epistemology and beliefs about physics have been examined in the literature, how students’ attitudes and approaches to problem solving change from the beginning to the end of instruction in introductory physics and how method of instruction or gender of the student impact them remain largely unexplored. To examine the potential changes in attitudes and approaches to problem solving over a semester, we administered a previously validated attitudes and approaches to problem solving (AAPS) survey both at the beginning (pre) and at the end of instruction (post) in eight large enrollment calculus-based introductory physics classes at a large research university in the United States. At both points in time (beginning and end of a semester of instruction), each class was also given surveys measuring students’ conceptual understanding: the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) or the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM), depending upon whether it was the first or second semester course. In addition, final exam scores, gender of students, and descriptions of the instructional methods used for each class were collected. The AAPS survey was used to measure students’ attitudes and approaches to problem solving, and the conceptual surveys and exam scores were used to measure the degree to which each course helped students learn physics concepts. We examined students’ performance on the AAPS survey, FCI or CSEM, and final exams, and compared the results for different instructional methods, and gender of students. Moreover, we examined whether or not there were correlations between the expertlike response on the AAPS survey and the performance on FCI or CSEM or final exams. We found that all classes exhibited a decline in score on the AAPS survey suggesting worse attitudes related to problem solving after instruction. Furthermore, controlling for the initial scores, classes which involved significant use of evidence-based active engagement methods exhibited statistically significantly better scores on the AAPS survey at the end of the course compared to classes which were taught primarily using a traditional lecture-based approach. Equally importantly, unlike broader epistemological surveys, female students were found to exhibit less of a decline in AAPS scores than did their male counterparts in all classes and the AAPS scores were always higher for female students at the end of the course. Future research should contemplate how this novel finding may be effectively exploited to develop and implement curricula and pedagogies to reduce the gender gap in performance often observed in introductory physics.
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