Describes a study of high school students that investigated the kind of knowledge bases mathematics students can develop and the difficulties that may appear. Discusses knowledge-base development within LISD (Learning through Intelligent Software Development), an approach to teaching and learning mathematical problem solving, specifically word…

Provides examples of student work on a problem which shows that students solve problems in several different ways. Discusses challenges to the teacher that might result from problems such as these. (ASK)

Reviews the approaches presented in the Self-Paced Study of Strategies Useful for Solving Word Problems in the Physical and Biological Sciences that can be used by students to successfully solve word problems encountered in any entry-level science course. Describes the topics covered in five "study sessions" that allow the students to practice the…

Argues that students are conditioned by years of multiple-choice testing to use only simple recall and view knowledge as an uncataloged museum full of independent facts that are collected, recited, and left to gather dust. (DDR)

Metaphors are guiding images that influence one's approach to problem solving. Experiential learning is a process of metaphor change; the task of educators is to facilitate development of new metaphors that generate new potential when old metaphors don't work. Discusses stages of metaphor development, creating an open learning space, and…

Examines the problem solving characteristics, strategy selection and use, and verification actions of African-American eighth-grade students (N=24). Indicates that students displayed approaches attributed to African-American learners, specifically the regular use of holistic reasoning. Concludes that success was correlated highly with strategy…

Examines and describes first-grade children's development of strategic processes for detecting and correcting errors, problem solving difficult or novel words, and confirming responses in order to be successful as they participated in Reading Recovery instruction, as opposed to simply increasing "item" knowledge (i.e., identifying more…

Examines the relationship between medical students' communication apprehension and their performance in problem-based learning sessions as assessed by a tutor and by their knowledge acquisition. (DDR)

Investigated problem-solving methods used by 3 sixth-graders working on a variety of mathematics problems over the school year. Found that the students used different strategies: one used visual strategies, one a more verbal approach, and the third a combination of the two. Over time, all three moved toward more nonvisual, verbal/analytic forms of…

Presents componential item response theory as a model-oriented approach to studying processes and strategies underlying the incorrect/correct responses to cognitive test tasks. Results from 417 elementary school students show that combining knowledge of solution strategies with Item Response Theory modeling produced a useful unidimensional scale…

Advocates the need for pupils to practice significant aspects of scientific work such as the making of epistemic (related to the nature and construction of knowledge) and methodological decisions. This requires that they work on problems and activities presented in a more open way than usual. Describes a case study. (Contains 11 references.)…

This study compared the effectiveness of 3 procedures for teaching 62 elementary students with learning disabilities to identify the correct algorithm in solving addition and subtraction word problems. The group receiving strategy teaching and sequencing practice problems and the group receiving strategy teaching only scored higher than…

Tower of Hanoi has become a popular tool in cognitive and neuropsychology to assess a set of behaviors collectively referred to as executive functions. Substantial variability in performance on the Tower of Hanoi (TOH) disk-transfer task among normally functioning young adults, and potential contributions to these individual differences, were…

Students' strategies for solving long division problems under a realistic mathematics approach (RME) at Dutch primary schools were categorized in two ways: (a) according to the level of how students created multiples of the divisor (chunking) to be subtracted from the dividend; and (b) according to their use, or nonuse, of schematic notation.…

This article describes the construction of a hierarchical taxonomy of metacognitive activities for the interpretation of thinking-aloud protocols of students in secondary education, who studied texts on history and physics. After testing an initial elaborate taxonomy on a restricted number of protocols by multiple raters, it appeared that the…