On the Keeping of Several Things in Mind

Abstract

For the past several years, an unusual teaching-learning situation has taken place in two fifth-grade classes: a university professor and the classroom teacher have been doing most of the learning. An initial opportunity for the professor to field-test some problems for a textbook that he was writing has turned into a long-term investigation of how youngsters generate and apply problem-solving strategies in various situations. Over the years, students have been exposed to nontraditional problems and asked to explore them individually, in groups, or together in one large group, depending on the situation. Wonderful observations have been made and used by both the professor and the classroom teacher to improve instruction.