Beyond Formula: Exploring Students’ Lived Experiences in Physics Problem-Solving

Abstract

Understanding how students engage during physics problem-solving is crucial for improving learning outcomes. Despite efforts to enhance conceptual understanding and support meaningful learning, few studies have examined how strategic, emotional, and agentic engagement intersect in students’ lived experiences of solving physics problems. This study explored how high school STEM students from Baybay City, Leyte, experience and express these dimensions, highlighting engagement as extending beyond formulas into meaning-making and self-directed learning. Using a descriptive phenomenological design guided by Giorgi’s (2009) method, ten students were interviewed with semi-structured, open-ended questions that prompted them to narrate their problem-solving experiences. Interviews were audio-recorded, translated from Bisaya to English using AI-assisted tools, and analyzed through phenomenological reduction, segmentation into meaning units, and synthesis into essential psychological structures. Analysis revealed four interrelated constituents of engagement: (1) strategic engagement, reflected in deliberate, organized problem-solving methods such as GAFSA and visual representations; (2) emotional engagement, manifested in regulating anxiety, stress, and excitement into calmness and satisfaction; (3) agentic engagement, demonstrated through proactive self-direction and collaboration, including creating reviewers, clarifying concepts, and supporting peers; and (4) transformative impact, where students internalized clarity, reflection, and initiative as transferable skills. Physics problem-solving thus emerged as a lived experience integrating thought, emotion, and action. The study concludes that reflective, student-centered pedagogies that cultivate these three dimensions can humanize physics learning, fostering conceptual mastery, emotional resilience, and empowered, self-directed learners.