Young Students’ Feelings Towards Problem-Solving Tasks: What Does “Success” Imply?

Abstract

According to the Swedish curriculum, problem-solving is to be part of mathematics teaching from preschool continuing throughout all grades in school. However, little is known about young students’ feelings towards problem-solving tasks. This paper reports on an educational design research study investigating the potential in teaching problem-solving in preschool classes (6-year-olds). Two examples are presented showing how the students evaluate their feelings towards the problem-solving tasks they have been working on. The results show that understanding a task from the beginning or being able to solve it quickly are not necessary prerequisites for young students to experience enjoyment when working with the tasks. Quite the opposite, the majority of the students evaluated the tasks as fun and accessible, even though their initial solutions were often incorrect and they had to struggle a lot to solve the problems.