An analysis of student performance on everyday problem solving tasks

Date

2015-08-25

Author

Çakır, Nur

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

161
views

0
downloads

Students have more experience in solving well-structured problems as they are more common in the educational setting. However problems faced in everyday practice are generally ill-structured problems which may have many equally effective alternative solutions (Jonassen, 1997). This study investigates pre-service teachersí problem solving strategies in social sciences/in everyday situations, determine their tendencies and deficiencies, and explore the differences between problem solving behaviors of freshmen and seniors. 72 students were asked to solve illstructured problem scenarios and the data was analyzed quantitatively to observe studentsí problem solving behaviors, whether there is a significant difference between freshmen and seniors, and whether there is a relation between problem solving and academic achievement. The results revealed that students had particular difficulty in providing adequate support for their solutions and lacked arguments that evaluate their proposals in terms of their pros and cons. No significant differences were observed between freshmen and seniors in terms of defining the problem, decomposing the problem into sub-problems and evaluating the proposed solution, and there was no significant relationship between problem solving skills and academic achievement. The implications of these findings for curriculum designers, educators in higher education and education policy makers will be discussed.

Subject Keywords

Pre-service teacher education, Problem solving, Reasoning, Social sciences, Higher education

URI

http://www.earli2015.org/media/EARLI2015/docs/EARLI2015_bookOfAbstracts.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/87659

Conference Name

16th Biennial EARLI Conference for Research on Learning, 25 - 29 Ağustos 2015

Collections

Department of Educational Sciences, Conference / Seminar

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Investigating the decision-making skills of cooperating teachers and student teachers of English in a Turkish context OSAM, ÜLKER; Balbay, Seher (Elsevier BV, 2004-10-01) Research on decision-making skills of teachers has indicated the importance of experience. Also, occupational culture has been found significantly related to teachers' thinking and behavior in the class. This study investigates in what aspects experienced teachers (cooperating teachers) and less experienced teachers) (student teachers) differ when making instant decisions on diverting from their lesson plans as they teach, and what cultural/institutional influences can be related to these differences. The d...
Prospective English teachers' views on the physical environment, human resources, and program of their departments Eret, Esra; Ok, Ahmet (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2010-12-01) The quality of teacher education, in general, is affected from a number of variables such as physical environment of the institutions, instructor quality, the curriculum implemented, administrative support, and others. As the input of the system, the perspectives of the students on those variables also influence the direction and the quality of the education taking place in the colleges of education. Regarding this, the purpose of the present study is to identify and compare the perspectives of fourth-year ...
An Assessment of Factors Related to Science Achievement of Turkish Students Kalender, Ilker; Berberoglu, Giray (Informa UK Limited, 2009-01-01) In this study, a hypothesised model with latent variables such as socio-economic status, students' perception of success and interest in different subject matter areas, out-of-school activities, and classroom teaching learning activities in relation to science achievement of the students was tested via linear structural modelling. The data come from the Student Assessment Program-2002 conducted by the Ministry of National Education in Turkey. The results obtained in a sample of 29,911 students indicated tha...
Modelling the relationship between the science teacher characteristics abd eighth grade Turkish student science achievement in TIMSS-R Yaman, İbrahim; Berberoğlu, Halil Giray; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2004) Teachers are percived as primary role in a students' learning process. To adequately perform this role, certain teacher characteristics are potentially more valuable for encouraging student learning. In an attempt to discern those charactersitics related to student learning and teacher behavior in the science classroom, numerous studies have beenconducted. The aim of this study is modeling the relationship between the teacher characteristics abd the student science achievement. Modeling analysis was carried...
Examining how early childhood education relate to narrative skills Akdağ, Zeynep; Erdiller Akın, Zeynep Berna; Department of Educational Sciences (2008) The aim of this study is to compare the narrative skills of first grade elementary students who had early childhood education and the narrative skills of first grade elementary students who did not have early childhood education and investigate their parents’ reading-related activities with them. In order to achieve this aim, the present study focuses on narratives produced by students who had early childhood education and students who did not have early childhood education using Mercer Mayer’s (1969) wordl...

Citation Formats

N. Çakır, “An analysis of student performance on everyday problem solving tasks,” presented at the 16th Biennial EARLI Conference for Research on Learning, 25 - 29 Ağustos 2015, Limasol, Kıbrıs, 2015, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://www.earli2015.org/media/EARLI2015/docs/EARLI2015_bookOfAbstracts.pdf.