Students' Achievement, Skill and Confidence in Using Stepwise Problem-Solving Strategies

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Problem-Solving Strategy Steps (PSSS) on students' achievement, skill, and confidence. The study was conducted in a two-year college classroom with 70 students from two different groups enrolled in a physics course. One of them was randomly selected as an experimental group (EG) and the other was the control group (CG). The students included in the EG were instructed by PSSS and traditional instruction while the students in the CG were instructed by only traditional instruction. The study was conducted in Newtonian Mechanics. The data of the research were collected with the Physics Achievement Test (PAT), the Problem-Solving Strategy Steps Survey (1P4S), and the Problem-Solving Confidence Questionnaire (PSCQ). The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the means of the EG and the CG in favor of the EG. Also, the use of problem-solving strategy steps contributed to the critical and analytical skills of the students.