There was consensus among those interviewed that some or all of these were emphasized as an approach to doing problems with the most positive response given for the first - get oriented - though all were frequently mentioned.
As one student said: "This is how I do my proofs now. I used to just fool around and didn't know how to get started. Now if a given approach doesn't work I go onto another." Excerpts of specific comments addressing the individual steps follows.

i) "We did this alot. Figuring out what we need to do." "Often discussed the problems at the beginning of class. Importance was most apparent when didn't really understand a problem." "Definitely emphasized. Significantly. Five to ten minutes each day to orient to problems. Discussed each problem." "Completely. Emphasized even without being stated. At the beginning of each class the instructor gave out problems and asked what was being sought, what needed to be used and we heard others." "Emphasized heavily since we went over the problems together, figuring out what the problems were saying." "Got this alot. Always in the beginning when problems were given out. Went around and probed students about understanding of the problem." "Initially, in each class we got a feel for the problem - see where it was going which we were interested in." "Personally, I took a lot of time figuring out the problem." "Emphasized this greatly. One of the important things." "I wasn't there about 50 percent of the time and when I came to class it was usually 10 minutes late and so I typically missed this." "Think this was really emphasized. This is where I got stuck since I often did not understand the problem."

ii) "For me, problem solving was going through to find a pattern, make a conjecture - this is devising a plan." "I don't think of this as a (separate) step (in the problem solving process). Often I would devise a plan and rework it, it was a drawn out process." "We would figure out a strategy." "Sometimes this was emphasized. I remember it was talked about but I didn't necessarily do it." "Don't think this was said directly. It did come up in the groups." "This was less emphasized, more weakly emphasized." "We asked ourselves, 'What would we do, how would we do it?'." "Immediately after the orientation we worked on a plan. Often choose problems which had a plan for. Instructor gave hints, for example, might recommend the pigeonhole principle." "Emphasized a lot but I didn't always follow the directions. This was an important activity in the group where there were different ideas." "Did this quite a bit."

iii) "Once we got a plan we carried it out as far as possible." "This was somewhat emphasized." "We broke into groups centered around different problems. The entire group process was about carrying out the plan." "I don't recall that this was emphasized." "I don't think this was said directly. It did come up in the small group work." "It was explicitly said." "Yes, in order to prove conjectures, to execute induction, or apply the pigeonhole principle."

iv) "Think it was." "This step was more of a bringing it together, a closure." "This was explicitly emphasized." "Yeah, for example, in a numerical problem, do the numbers make sense." "This came up in both the group work and solo work. Messed up alot ... have to see if the work was right, looked at the results to see what they tell you." "Definitely emphasized often, e.g. through the presentation of problems and discussion in groups." "Initially problems were difficult. When we got solid results we went back and checked for correctness." "Did that sometimes. By usually once we got a reasonable result we usually had confidence that it was right." 'Did this some. We did checking of proofs in groups to figure out if they worked. We didn't check numerical problems."