While collaborative Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have been designed for older students and have been shown to support sense-making behaviors, there has not been as much work on creating systems to support collaboration between elementary school students. We have developed and tested, with 84 students, individual and collaborative versions…

A recent study, "The Effects of Cognitive Strategy Instruction on Math Problem Solving of Middle School Students of Varying Ability," examined the effectiveness of "Solve It!," a program intended to improve the problem-solving skills of seventh-grade math students. During the program, students are taught cognitive strategies of…

This study investigated how to improve the teaching of problem solving in a large Melbourne secondary school. Coaching was used to support and equip five teachers, some with limited experiences in teaching problem solving, with knowledge and strategies to build up students' problem solving and reasoning skills. The results showed increased…

This study compares Singaporean Grade 6 students' performance and strategy preference on two graphic-rich mathematics tasks, presented via pencil-and-paper and iPad modes. There were statistically significant differences between students' performances on the two tasks, one in favour of the paper mode and the other in favour of the iPad. Students…

This study examined teacher and administrator perspectives in regards to the adoption and implementation of an elementary mathematics teaching approach called Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), at three elementary school sites of a rural elementary school district, located in the Central Valley of California. A holistic exploratory case study…

The paper presents the results of a study based on a training program for in-service mathematics teachers, targeting to improve their skills of problem posing and qualitative appreciation of problems. During this training program, we found an improvement in participating teachers' availability to discuss and analyse math problems, but also…

Emotions play important part in mathematical problem solving, yet the theories of their role are still at their preliminary stages. In our study, we introduce a method, where screen recordings and automatic emotion recognition software are used to study the emotional states of five upper secondary school students during a solitary GeoGebra problem…

The aim of this qualitative research is to identify Mexican high school students' emotional experiences in mathematics classes. In order to obtain the data, focus group interviews were carried out with 22 students. The data analysis is based on the theory of the cognitive structure of emotions (Ortony, Clore & Collins, 1988) that specifies the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of action design research (ADR), a combination of action research and design science research, when conducting research where both practical relevance and academic rigor are required. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents ADR in action in order to motivate its use when…

This study examined how working memory plays different roles in open-ended versus closed-ended creative problem-solving processes, as represented by divergent thinking tests and insight problem-solving tasks. With respect to the analysis of different task demands and the framework of dual-process theories, the hypothesis was that the idea…

This paper presents a bibliography of 263 references related to human problem solving, arranged by subject matter. The references were taken from PsycInfo and Academic Premier data-base. Journal papers, book chapters, and dissertations are included. The topics include human development, education, neuroscience, and research in applied settings. It…

Logarithms continue to play an important role in mathematics (most significantly in calculus), science, and engineering. It is therefore important for students to understand logarithms as real numbers as well as the characteristics of logarithmic functions. Exploration of challenges in understanding logarithms as real numbers and logarithmic…

It is well known that the regulation of processes is an important factor in problem solving from Grade 7 to university level (cf. Mevarech & Kramarski, 1997; Schoenfeld, 1985). We do not, however, know much about the problem-solving competencies of younger children (cf. Heinze, 2007, p. 15). Do the results of studies also hold true for…

We attempt to answer the problem "When approaching word problems, do students prefer certain real life application over others?" through two studies involving classroom research. Each study involved students in four college algebra sections in two two-year campuses. Students were presented with a selection of word problems covering a…

In this article Anne Roche describes some of the different types of story problems defined in the Cognitively Guided Instruction professional development program. Teachers will find the table reproduced on page 32 to be very helpful in designing word problems. Roche then gives some suggestions for improving the way division stories are used in the…