Abstract
The competence of Science Foundation students at the Mafikeng Campus of North-West University in some basic intellectual skills was studied, over a period of three years, utilising carefully designed questions. The skills tested included language, mathematical, graphical, three-dimensional visualisation, information processing and reasoning skills. The results showed that their competence in the basic intellectual skills needed to study science effectively was far below standard. This lack of competence could be expected to be detrimental to self-confidence and may also be an important reason for the high failure rate of students in their science courses. We concluded with the suggestion that much greater emphasis should be placed on the systematic and sustained training of students in intellectual skills and strategies of various types and that such training should be integrated, throughout the courses, with the teaching of subject content.
Highlights
The various types of intellectual skills and strategies that are important for learning and problem solving have been organised and discussed comprehensively by Marzano et al.[1]
Even though extensive research has been done on problem solving,[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] not much work has been done on the systematic testing of individual students’ competence levels in the basic intellectual skills and strategies that are essential for effective problem solving
The main objective of this study was to test the level of competence of students in the various types of intellectual skills and strategies that are important for problem solving in science courses
Summary
The various types of intellectual skills and strategies that are important for learning and problem solving have been organised and discussed comprehensively by Marzano et al.[1]. Even though extensive research has been done on problem solving,[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] not much work has been done on the systematic testing of individual students’ competence levels in the basic intellectual skills and strategies that are essential for effective problem solving. They did not qualify for admission into BSc degree programmes and the main objective of the Science Foundation programme is to prepare them for tertiary education As part of her PhD thesis, Drummond[9] tested the competence of first year BSc science students at the Mafikeng campus of North-West University in some basic skills and strategies. Many of the questions we designed did not involve scientific concepts
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