Students must be good problem solvers in order to compete in today’s global economy. However, many students, including students with disabilities, do not have adequate problem-solving skills, thus eliminating potential job opportunities. In order to increase opportunities for problem-solving success, schools must find strategies that are effective and efficient for students to use and simulate real-world scenarios. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether a direct, cognitive-strategy, problem-solving program (Solve It!), which is designed to enhance student skills in word-problem solving, could increase the accuracy with which students with and without disabilities correctly solved word problems and whether it affected students beliefs about problem solving. The research questions developed for this study were (a) does the Solve It! method affect the math problem-solving achievement of Grade 6 students, and (b) what are teacher and student perceptions of the efficacy of the Solve It! method of teaching word-problem solving? A quantitative case study was used for this study to determine the efficacy of a specific cognitive instructional strategy with Grade 6 students. Participants in this study included 54 Grade 6 students, 7 with disabilities, from a middle school in Southwestern Colorado. Data were gathered from students through the use of pre- and posttests containing 10 word math problems. Students were also given short weekly quizzes to monitor progress and check for proper usage of the strategy. Finally, data were gathered from the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) instrument, winter and spring testing periods, to investigate changes on the problem-solving strand of the mathematics test. Teacher interviews and student surveys were also used to gain deeper insight into the effectiveness of the strategy. From this analysis, conclusions were drawn to answer the research questions. Comparison of means showed that although the Solve It! strategy did not statistically significantly improve students’ mathematical problem-solving abilities on the standardized NWEA test, it did improve their scores in word-problem solving on the 10-item word-problem test. In addition, the students’ perceived self-efficacy to solve word problems increased. / text

Teachers are being asked to engage in ambitious mathematics teaching in order to reform children's mathematics learning, and it has proven to be challenging. Unraveling the challenges requires understanding the in-the-moment decisions that teachers make while teaching mathematics. The focus of this study is to understand teacher noticing, the ways in which teachers identify, reason about and make decisions in the situations that occur when engaging English language learners in problem solving. Specifically, I used the construct of professional noticing of children's mathematical thinking (Jacobs, Lamb, & Philipp, 2010) to investigate what three bilingual teachers notice as they participate in a teacher study group to analyze and reflect on their experiences in weekly problem solving small groups. What teachers noticed reflected attention to situations in which they struggled to understand children's mathematical thinking and attempts to direct students towards correct problem solving. Teachers' decisions and struggles in engaging children in problem solving also revealed a focus on the role of preparing English language learners be successful for standardized testing. However, looking at student's work in the teacher study group began to help teachers focus on children's mathematical thinking. Implications on continued understanding of teacher noticing, effective mathematics professional development and developing understanding of mathematics teaching to English Language learners are discussed. / text

Problem-Based Learning (PBL) has been widely adopted as an important approach to medical education in order to help students master knowledge by solving authentic problems. However, the effect of PBL on students’ construction of a well-organized knowledge base is found not satisfactory. It is assumed that learning a concept found in a problem will automatically result in that concept being used to solve other problems, which is not always the case. Knowledge gained from practice is found difficult to retain and reuse as a result of contextualization and dynamic aspects of actual problem-solving practice. Reciprocity between practice and knowledge has been insufficiently investigated in existing studies. The purpose of this study was to address the challenge by aligning knowledge construction with problem solving through the design of a computer-based cognitive tool and implementation of the tool into an online learning environment. The tool consists of the argument mapping technique to represent the problem-solving processes and the concept mapping technique to represent the knowledge constructed from the problem-solving experience, so called dual-mapping tool. This study adopted a design-based research paradigm with two rounds of design and evaluation to explore how the proposed dual-mapping learning (DML) environment could be designed to externalize and connect the problem-solving and knowledge-construction processes and to evaluate how effectively the DML environment could support PBL. The design of the DML environment was underpinned by the cognitive apprenticeship model, which is widely used in situated learning contexts such as PBL. The model highlights the importance of offering an authentic learning context, externalizing complex cognitive processes, and providing expert guidance on learning processes. Accordingly, the proposed DML environment consists of an authentic problem context for exploration, a dual-mapping tool for articulation and reflection of problem-solving and knowledge-construction processes, and expert support for modeling, coaching, and scaffolding these complex processes. The evaluation study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the DML environment in terms of its acceptance by students, students’ problem-solving and knowledge-construction performances, and its impact on learning emotions and motivation to learn. Medical students from two medical schools in Mainland China participated in the study to use the DML environment. Multiple-source data was collected from questionnaire surveys, pre-and post-competency tests, semi-structured interviews, and log file data of online learning records, and was analyzed through descriptive statistical analysis, analysis of means, correlation analysis, analysis of variance, and content analysis. The evaluation results suggested that the students found the DML environment useful, and that the DML environment was effective in improving clinical problem-solving and medical-knowledge construction performance, as well as activating positive emotions and motivation in PBL. The findings of the study have practical implications for educators and learning technology designers as well as theoretical implications for educational researchers. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The two studies described here address the question of how District Nurses determine patients' nursing problems and plan care. The theoretical framework for the investigation is derived from Information Processing Theory. A process tracing methodology was used to capture the content of District Nurses' thinking during an assessment visit to a newly referred patient. Data was collected in the natural setting to ensure ecological validity. The assessment visits were tape recorded and immediately following the visit a stimulated recall session was conducted in which the nurse was asked to describe her thinking during the assessment, prompted by the tape recording. This session was itself tape-recorded. Thus two verbal protocols were elicited for each assessment: a visit protocol and a recall protocol. Data were analysed by content analysis. The verbal protocols were assessed to ensure that they met the criteria for validity and reliability of the coding schedules was established using two measures or interrater reliability. The first study sought evidence of hypothetico-deductive reasoning by nurses and describes the type of decisions made by nurses. Although evidence of hypothesis generation and testing was found, nurses' knowledge was found to determine how they interpreted data initially and what data they sought. It was therefore concluded that a model of diagnostic reasoning that focused on cognitive processes alone was insufficient to explain the dynamics of clinical problem solving. The second study, therefore, sought to establish the structure and content of District Nurses knowledge and the cognitive processes they used during an assessment. The results suggest that nurses attend to both clinical and personal phenomena in order to make a judgement about the state of the patient and that their knowledge is organised internally as schema. This provides an explanation of how nurses recognise salient information and determine what further data is required. Four key cognitive activities were identified: search, inference, action and plan. The study concludes by drawing a line of reasoning to show how nurses integrate knowledge and reasoning processes to accomplish clinical problem solving.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Master / Master of Philosophy

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The purpose of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a comprehensive interpersonal problem solving training program with four and five year old children. The goal of the program was to teach children the necessary skills to successfully resolve problems with their peers. The interpersonal problem solving training program consisted of the following core components: language, perception, problem identification, empathy, alternative generation, consequential thinking, and integration. The sample consisted of 46 children, 23 children in the experimental group and 23 children in the control group. Both experimental and control group subjects met for ten weeks (15-20 minutes a day) with trained graduate students. Control group subjects participated in reading story sessions while experimental group subjects participated in the interpersonal problem solving training sessions. Experimental and control group subjects were assessed at pretest and posttest on two measures. The BPIPS (a behavioral assessment of interpersonal problem solving ability) and the BOS (a behavioral observation scale). Analysis of variance of gain scores demonstrated significant differences between experimental group subjects and control group subjects on: (a) ability to generate solutions in interpersonal problem solving situations and (b) frequency of positive verbal and nonverbal interaction with peers. Analysis of variance of gain scores indicated no significant differences between experimental and control groups on: (a) the frequency of positive interactions with adults or (b) the frequency of negative interactions with either peers or adults. Discussion focused on the measured and observed results from training in the interpersonal problem solving program, possible explanations for insignificant differences relative to adult interactions, and program generalizability.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.