Teaching students to recognize structural similarities between statistics word problems
✍ Scribed by Jill L. Quilici; Richard E. Mayer
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2002
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 134 KB
- Volume
- 16
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0888-4080
- DOI
- 10.1002/acp.796
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✦ Synopsis
Abstract
An important skill in mathematical problem solving is recognizing that the problem one is working on (target problem) can be solved using the same method as a problem one already knows (source problem). In a preliminary study, college students displayed a higher level of structural awareness (i.e. sorting word problems on the basis of structural features) at the end rather than the beginning of their first statistics course. In the main study, we taught college students to sort statistics word problems on the basis of structural features (i.e. whether the problem could be solved by t‐test, correlation, or chi‐square statistics) rather than surface features (i.e. the problem's cover story). These results support a structural awareness theory in which students learn to form problem schemas by abstracting the underlying structural features of a problem statement and organizing them into a generalized problem model. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.