Children's Problem-solving Performance Research Articles

The Impact of Context on Children's Performance in Solving Everyday Mathematical Problems With Real-World Settings

This study aimed to investigate children's performance and perception of problem difficulty in solving everyday mathematical problems with familiar versus unfamiliar contexts. In addition, the ways that children identify the similarities in problem-solving approaches between problem settings and everyday shopping were also examined. Forty-eight 4th-grade children participated in this study. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used. The results demonstrated that the familiar contexts neither enhance children's problem-solving performance nor decrease problem difficulty. More than half of the children did not identify the similarity in problem-solving approaches between problem settings and real shopping. When making judgments, even good problem-solvers were found to be distracted by superficial features in outward appearance and global mapping in similarity. This research highlights that children in the process of solving problems tend to be distracted by non-mathematical features in the problem settings. Some implications for instruction are given.

Children's Analogical Problem Solving: The Effects of Superficial, Structural, and Procedural Similarity

Two experiments with children between 5 and 8 years of age were designed to determine the effects of different types of similarity on analogical problem solving and to explore the cognitive components responsible for these effects. Three dimensions of similarity shared by the source and target problems were manipulated, and children's problem-solving performance was assessed with multiple measures. The results indicate that superficial and structural similarity facilitated the process of drawing analogies. More importantly, the present research demonstrated that procedural similarity influenced the process of applying analogues. The results also indicate that children as young as 5 and 6 years of age are capable of detecting and utilizing similarities in superficial features, structural relations, and procedural operations. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Teaching children to add and subtract

At a 1980 conference, leading mathematics educators synthesized previous knowledge on children's early understanding of addition and subtraction and proposed central parameters for future research in these areas form a cognitive science perspective. We have, since 1980, increased our knowledge about how children learn to add and subtract, but we need to know more about the best ways for teachers to guide children as they construct knowledge of addition and subtraction. In this article, we review several studies that focus on an enhanced role for teachers in enabling children to learn addition and subtraction. These studies describe efforts that have been made to teach children to use diagrams and mediational representations, number sentences, or algorithms and procedures. The studies report improvement in children's problem-solving performance, but the impact of the efforts described on children's conceptual understanding is less clear. Thus, we analyze this research, pose questions on the relationship of instruction to children's knowledge construction, and propose a research agenda that we believe will enable us to understand how teaching can best help children learn to add and subtract.

Children's Problem-Solving Performance: The Effects of Compliance and Cognitive Factors

Abstract This study was designed to examine the robustness of Crombie and Gold's finding (1989) that a high degree of compliance is negatively related to children's problem-solving performance. The effect of compliance on children's problem-solving performance was examined by extending Crombie and Gold's investigation to a different task, assessing the effects of a training session in which children's nonreliance on an adult model was reinforced, and measuring the contribution of relevant cognitive factors. Children's problem-solving competence was examined with a standardized measure of general problem-solving performance and a task-specific measure. Age, verbal intelligence, and task-oriented memory were entered as covariates. High-compliant children did not perform as well as their low-compliant peers on the general problem-solving measure, and this group difference remained significant after the effects of the covariates were taken into consideration. On the task-specific measure, which requires respo...

Effects of strategy monitoring and proactive instruction on children's problem-solving performance.

Thirty fifth- and sixth-grade students were given extensive proactive instruction on the content of a computer-based problem-solving game called Rocky's Boots. Participants were then divided into three treatment groups that received either problem-solving training, problem-solving and self-monitoring training, or no further training. The monitored problem-solving group solved more complex problems than either of the other two groups, and they took less time to solve those complex problems. The specific impact of the monitoring training is discussed as evidence for the importance of strategy monitoring in learning to solve problems. Results are discussed as evidence of the potential of proactive instruction on problem-solving performance.

Effects of strategy monitoring and proactive instruction on children's problem-solving performance.

Effects of strategy monitoring and proactive instruction on children's problem-solving performance.

Effects of training in strategic questioning on children's problem-solving performance.

Effects of training in strategic questioning on children's problem-solving performance.

Effects of training in strategic questioning on children's problem-solving performance.

Forty-six 5th graders in 3 conditions worked in pairs to solve computer-assisted problems. One group (guided questioning) used strategic questions to guide their cognitive and metacognitive activity during problem solving, with partners engaging in a questioning-answering dialogue. A 2nd group (unguided questioning) was simply instructed to ask and answer questions with their partners during problem solving. A 3rd group (control) received no training or instructions in questioning

Independent Problem Solving in the Development of Metacognition

Abstract The present study investigated the impact of adult guidance on children's problem-solving performance. Children at three age levels (N = 24; preschool, kindergarten, second grade) each worked daily on one of three difficult, form-board puzzles for five consecutive days and for an additional day six days later. The experimental group received adult instruction on solving the puzzles during Days 2 and 3. Four measures of problem-solving performance were taken each day. Results indicated no main effects for treatment group, but there were significant differences in problem-solving performance as a function of age and trials. Adult guidance was not a necessary precursor to improvements in children's problem-solving performance. The results suggest that self-initiated and other-directed problem-solving activity play an active part in the development of cognitive and metacognitive skill.

Improving Verbal Problem-solving Performance

Learning to solve problems is the principal reason for learning mathematics (Brodin ky 1977). Yet, the results of the National Assessment of Educa tional Progress (NAEP) released from 1972-78 indicate that one of the maj or weaknesse in mathematic achievement is problem solving (Carpenter et al. 1978; N AEP 1979). What are the difficultie with children's problem-solving performance? The NAEP results sugget that lack of computational skills was not considered to be a major factor in the weakness in problem-solving performance. Davidson (1977) believes that children cannot solve problem because they do not comprehend them. Some author have pointed out that difficulties in reading stem from the questions and the comparative language used in verbally stated mathematic problems (Hargis 1975; Knight and Hargis 1977; Zweng 1979).

Effects of Cooperative, Competitive, and Individualistic Conditions on Children's Problem-Solving Performance

The effects of interpersonal cooperation, competition, and individualistic efforts were compared on a categorization and retrieval, a spatial-reasoning, and a verbal problem-solving task. Forty-five first-grade children were randomly assigned to conditions stratified on the basis of sex and ability, so that an approximately equal percentage of males and females and high, medium, and low ability children were included in each condition. The results indicate that on all three tasks students in the cooperative condition achieved higher than did those in the individualistic condition, and on two of the three tasks students in the cooperative condition achieved higher than did those in the competitive condition. There were no significant differences between the competitive and individualistic condition. Students in the cooperative condition used higher quality strategies on the three tasks than did those in the other two conditions, and they perceived higher levels of peer support and encouragement for learning. High ability students in the cooperative condition generally achieved higher than did the high ability students in the competitive and individualistic conditions.

Piagetian Operations and Field Independence as Factors in Children's Problem-solving Performance

SAARNI, CAROLYN INGRID. Piagetian Operations and Field Independence as Factors in Children's Problem-solving Performance. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1973, 44, 338-345. 2 formal operational tasks and the rod and frame test were administered to 64 middle-class young adolescents, evenly divided according to sex and grade. Their performance on 2 complex, multistep problems was evaluated according to level of field independence nested within level of cognitive development. The results indicated that Piagetian developmental level significantly predicted problemsolving performance, whereas level of field independence did not appear to clarify individual differences in a meaningful way. Significant sex differences were found on the rod and frame test but not on the formal operational tasks.

Piagetian Operations and Field Independence as Factors in Children's Problem-Solving Performance

Piagetian Operations and Field Independence as Factors in Children's Problem-Solving Performance