Development of a model to enhance managerial strategies in problem solving

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate children’s perseverance when solving difficult or unfamiliar number problems. It was concerned with those students who are referred to as “perseverers” because they reached a stage in their problem solution where they recognised that they had not reached a satisfactory answer and decided to take some action—start again, modify their strategies or change to different strategies rather than giving up immediately. More specifically, it explores the question of how these perseverers manage their use of problem-solving strategies. The sample consisted of ten boys and ten girls in Grade 6 and ten boys and ten girls in Grade 10. The tasks consisted of non-routine number problems of varying difficulty. Data gathering took the form of clinical unstructured interviews with individual students in which they were asked to verbalise concurrently with solving a set of number problems. Task analysis maps were used to provide overviews of the interview protocols. Through an analysis of the maps of students who were ultimately successful, it became apparent that these children were more inclined than others to be flexible in their use of strategies. A model was developed which described the sequence of strategies used most consistently by successful students.