Practice problems and worked examples are both well-established teaching techniques. Research in math and physics suggests that having students study worked examples during their first contact with new material, instead of solving practice problems, can be beneficial to their subsequent performance, possibly due to the reduced cognitive load…

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between Finnish and Taiwanese textbooks for grades 7 to 9 on the topic of solving systems of linear equations (simultaneous equations). The specific textbooks examined were TK in Taiwan and FL in Finland. The content analysis method was used to examine (a) the teaching sequence, (b)…

A large body of research has shown that for novice learners, instruction that relies more heavily on worked examples than on problem solving, is more effective for learning as shown by higher test performance. Moreover, this beneficial effect is often obtained with less acquisition time and lower cognitive load during acquisition and test phase.…

E. Brandstatter, G. Gigerenzer, and R. Hertwig (2006) showed that the priority heuristic matches or outperforms modifications of expected utility theory in predicting choice in 4 diverse problem sets. M. H. Birnbaum (2008) argued that sets exist in which the opposite is true. The authors agree--but stress that all choice strategies have regions of…

There is no agreement about the robustness of intuitive representations of the circulatory system and their susceptibility to change by instruction. In this paper, we analyse to what extent students with varying degrees of biology instruction and different ages (High School Health Science and Social Science students and first and final year…

Two important factors that influence problem solving are the nature of the task and the kind of knowledge brought to the problem by the solver. After a consideration of the definition of a problem, puzzle problems are discussed, as are problem representation and general processes of solution. Also discussed is the question of solving problems that…

Main findings of a previous study are confirmed in that the matrix mode of representation, as actually used by Ss, again leads to significantly better performance on all problems except those where information was presented in terms of negative statements. (Authors)

Study results indicate that teachers should be less concerned with teaching relationships between problem elements and more concerned with helping students to identify logical assumptions made in problem statement. (Author)

This monograph provides teachers with a wide range of articles on the teaching of problem solving in the mathematics classroom. The first section, on Understanding the Problem, includes articles which provide a sense of the "problem" of teaching problem solving. The second section, on Devising a Plan, provides suggested plans for…

Examines the relationship between development of logical processes required in deductive reasoning and their use by preschoolers, also considering possible explanations for children's deductive reasoning. The relationship of problem content to real-world knowledge and the sequence of presentation of problem types were found to affect the display…

The goal of this study was to find a way to quantify three criteria of representational quality, described by Greeno, so that it would be possible to examine statistically the relationship between representational quality and other variables related to problem solution. The sample consisted of 18 college students, 84 percent of whom had…

Groups trained to compare the whole and subset improved in cue identification from negative instances; performance in the stimulus exposure group declined. (Authors)

MENTAL ABILITY CAN BE MEASURED BY THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS RATHER THAN BY THE NUMBER OF CORRECT SOLUTIONS. THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS STUDY ARE--(1) TO DEVELOP AND STUDY PROPERTIES OF MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES WHICH REVEAL THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS, (2) TO DEVELOP WAYS OF DESCRIBING INDIVIDUALS THROUGH THEIR PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESSES, AND (3) TO…

Sixth graders with Australian parents and sixth graders with Greek immigrant parents were given three tasks: memory for a set of 24 pictures, a buttonboard task, and 20 questions. "The results point to the importance of specific strategies on problem-solving tasks and to the importance, in cross-cultural comparisons, of shared understandings…