Analogical Problem Construction and Transfer in Mathematical Problem Solving

Abstract

An important objective of education is to increase a student's capability to competently address varied problems in a changing environment. To meet this goal, a student must learn to transfer knowledge and skills for one problem in one setting to analogical problems in new settings. This paper describes the results of three experiments studying the use of a specific learning task for promoting analogical transfer with word problems in basic probability among high school students. This strategy involved letting students construct their own analogous problems. It was assumed that such a procedure would allow students to more actively explore the underlying problem structure. The results of three experiments showed that, compared to a control group, students who used the analogical problem construction strategy were better at: (1) transferring analogical problem information between analogous source and target problems; (2) retrieving the analogous source problem; and (3) applying the retrieved analogous information to the target problem.