Project details: Children Moving Beyond Initial Success in Problem Solving

Research Team

1. Prof Jill Bourne
2. Dr Charis Voutsina
3. Mr Keith Jones

Funding Body

ESRC  

Duration

October 2004 - September 2005

Description

This project built on an earlier study, "The Role of Representation in Solving Addition Problems", which showed that children can move beyond success, and introduce qualitative changes and modifications to their successful successful problem-solving strategies. These changes indicate a movement from success-oriented behaviour to an organisation-oriented phase in problem solving during which children, as problem solvers, acquire better control and increasing conscious access to knowledge that they already have. The aim of this project was both to test the theoretical model and to refine an innovative methodology that is proving suitable for studying dynamic changes in young pupils' problem solving behaviour.

Publications

Voutsina, C. and Jones, K. (2005), The Process of Knowledge Re-description as Underlying Mechanism for the Development of Children’s Problem-solving Strategies: an example from arithmetic. Paper presented to the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference 2005 (EARLI2005), Nicosia, Cyprus, August 23-27, 2005.

Voutsina, C. and Jones, K. (2005), Children Building on Success: mathematical problem solving in the early years. Paper presented to the British Educational Research Association conference 2005 (BERA 2005), University of Glamorgan, Wales, 14-17 September 2005.

Voutsina, C. and Jones, K. (2004), Studying Change Processes in Primary School Arithmetic Problem Solving: issues in combining methodologies, Proceedings of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, 24(3), 57-62.

Voutsina, C. and Jones, K.(2003), Moving Beyond Success: changes in young children’s successful problem solving behaviour. In: A. Gagatis and S. Papastravridis (Eds), Proceedings of the 3rd Mediterranean Conference on Mathematical Education. Athens: University of Athens. pp717-724. ISBN: 960-7341-25-2