Abstract
Solving quantitative physics tasks has a long tradition in Czech education system. Therefore, we study how high school students can improve their problem solving skills in physics lectures.
The goal of the first part of the study described in this paper was to find out what methods or steps students claim they use during solving physics tasks and if there are any factors that affect choosing the these methods. Two questionnaires for students concerning use of chosen problem solving strategies were composed — one containing open format questions only and the second with open format questions and rating scale questions.
The respondents of the questionnaire survey were high school students (students at the age of 15 to 19), who are attending physics courses during their study. We found that many students use strategies that can be efficient for getting answers of simple problems, but they are not appropriate for developing problem solving skills.
The questionnaire survey is a part of more extensive research concerned with problem solving in physics education.