• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.179-191
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• 2008

Although problem solving was a major focus of mathematics education research in many countries throughout the 1990s, not enough is known about how people best acquire problem-solving skills. This paper is an attempt to advance further development of problem-solving skills of talented school students through combination of some methods accessible from curriculum knowledge and more special techniques that are beyond curriculum. Analysis of various problems is provided in detail. Educational aspects of challenging problems in mathematical contests up to IMO level are, also, taken into account and discussed in the paper.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.233-255
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• 2004

Problem solving in math education is of great importance. The interest on problem solving in math education is growing all over the world. Problem solving ability is important throughout the fourth-sixth national curriculum in Korea and this is also necessary in the seventh national curriculum. The writer has implemented a proper model for problem posing and this is also necessary in the seventh national curriculum that emphasizes self-leading for improvement in the classroom. This model has advantages to cultivate a good habit of students who tries to solve the problems with concrete strategies, to take part in the problem solving activity and to change their mathematical attitude.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.289-309
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• 2018

There has been a gradually increasing focus on adopting mathematical modeling techniques into school curricula and classrooms as a method to promote students' mathematical problem solving abilities. However, this approach is not commonly realized in today's classrooms due to the difficulty in developing appropriate mathematical modeling problems. This research focuses on developing reformulation strategies for those problems with regard to mathematical modeling. As the result of analyzing existing textbooks across three grade levels, the majority of problems related to the real-world focused on the Operating and Interpreting stage of the mathematical modeling process, while no real-world problem dealt with the Identifying variables stage. These results imply that the textbook problems cannot provide students with any chance to decide which variables are relevant and most important to know in the problem situation. Following from these results, reformulation strategies and reformulated problem examples were developed that would include the Identifying variables stage. These reformulated problem examples were then applied to a 7th grade classroom as a case study. From this case study, it is shown that: (1) the reformulated problems that included authentic events and questions would encourage students to better engage in understanding the situation and solving the problem, (2) the reformulated problems that included the Identifying variables stage would better foster the students' understanding of the situation and their ability to solve the problem, and (3) the reformulated problems that included the mathematical modeling process could be applied to lessons where new mathematical concepts are introduced, and the cooperative learning environment is required. This research can contribute to school classroom's incorporation of the mathematical modeling process with specific reformulating strategies and examples.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.73-85
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of the auxiliary questions of word problems presented to students on their problem solving-strategies and mathematical thinking and to discuss the educational implications of the results. As a result of making an analysis, problems that included auxiliary questions to give information on workable problem-solving strategies made it more possible for students of different levels to do relatively equal mathematical thinking than problems that didn't by inducing them to adopt efficient problem-solving strategies. And they were helpful for the students in the middle and lower tiers to find a clue for problem solving without giving up. But it's unclear whether the problems that provided possible strategies through the auxiliary questions stirred up the analogical thinking of the students. In addition, due to the impact of the problems provided, some students failed to adopt a strategy that they could have come up with on their own. On the contrary, when the students solved word problems that just offered basic recommendation by minimizing auxiliary questions, the upper-tiered students could devise various strategies, but in the case of the students in the middle and lower tiers, those who gave up easily or who couldn't find an answer were relatively larger in number.

• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.17-30
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• 2016

This study focused on the selection and application of mathematical problems to provide mathematically challenging tasks for the gifted elementary students. For the selection, a mathematical problem from <算術管見> of Joseon dynasty, '圓容三方互求', was selected, considering the participants' experiences of problem solving and the variety of approaches to the problem. For the application, teaching strategies such as individual problem solving and sharing of the solving methods were used. The problem was provided for 13 mathematically gifted elementary students. They not only solved it individually but also shared their approaches by presentations. Their solving and sharing processes were observed and their results were analyzed. Based on this, some didactical considerations were suggested.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.30-37
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the difference of problem-solving ability according to student's level of self-efficacy. Participants were 72 junior students who took the course 'Environmental Instrumental Analysis'. Before the PBL activities, students were given the self-efficacy tests to all students. Among them, 44 students(30% of each high and low ranking) were selected and encouraged to complete pre-problem solving tests. The PBL was conducted for 12 weeks using blended learning strategies. After the PBL, 44students completed post-problem solving tests. Results showed that there were differences of problem-solving ability according to student's level of self-efficacy. From the results, instructional strategies for promoting students' self-efficacy should be employed for enhancing problem-solving ability in PBL activities.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.177-191
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• 2016

Students can calculate the addition and subtraction problem using informal knowledge before receiving the formal instruction. Recently, the value that a computation lesson focus on the understanding and developing the various strategies is highlighted by curriculum developers as well as in reports. Ideally, a educational setting and classroom culture reflected students' learning and problem solving strategies. So, this paper analyzed the similarity and difference with respect to the numeric sentence and word problem in the addition and subtraction. The subjects for the study were 100 third-grade Korean students and 68 third-grade American students. Researcher developed the questionnaire in the addition and subtraction and used it for the survey. The following results have been drawn from this study. The computational ability of Korean students was higher than that of American students in both the numeric sentence and word problem. And it was revealed the differences of the strategies which were used problem solving process. Korean students tended to use algorithms and numbers' characters and relations, but American students tended to use the drawings and algorithms with drawings.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.15-34
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• 2014

Creative problem solving has become an important issue in many fields. Among problems, dilemma need creative solutions. New creative and innovative problem solving strategies are required to handle the contradiction relations of the dilemma problems because most creative and innovative cases solved contradictions inherent in the dilemmas. Among various kinds of problem solving theories, TRIZ provides the concept of physical contradiction as a common problem solving principle in inventions and patents. In TRIZ, 4 separation principles solve the physical contradictions of given problems. The 4 separation principles are separation in time, separation in space, separation within a whole and its parts, and separation upon conditions. Despite this attention, an accurate definitions of the separation principles of TRIZ is missing from the literature. Thus, there have been several different interpretations about the separation principles of TRIZ. The different interpretations make problems more ambiguous to solve when the problem solvers apply the 4 separation principles. This research aims to fill the gap in several ways. First, this paper classify the types of contradiction relations and the contradiction solving dimensions based on the Butterfly model for contradiction solving. Second, this paper compares and analyzes each contradiction relation type with the Butterfly diagram. The contributions of this paper lies in reducing the problem space by recognizing the structures and the types of contradiction problems exactly.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.104-112
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• 2013

We examined the strategies to stimulate the reflective thinking using science notebook for the improvement of problem solving ability which is one of the core skills for the future. The strategies we derived have four steps which are input, output, solving mission and reflection as my own mirror. We applied the strategies to the 6th grade class for autumn semester in order to examine the students learning process and the result. We could observe that students looked into their own learning and had a time to look back their activities in the class. We could also confirmed that science notebook would be effective to improve the problem solving as stimulating the reflective thinking. In addition, we could specify the strategy of using science notebook in the class. At a 'input' stage, students should be able to choose their own learning style as their preference and teacher need to give them proper feedback. Interaction with peers should be emphasized during the activities as 'question attack' and 'question defense' in 'output' stage and 'solving mission' stage. You should suggest the students various method to record their thought from looking back their classroom activities instead of mere writing. We also examine the students achievement from the students' notebook and Meta Cognitive Awareness test. As a result, students who had studied using science notebook showed statistically meaningful higher achievement than controlled students.

• Journal of Advanced Information Technology and Convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.77-87
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• 2019

The Butterfly model, which aims to solve contradiction problems, defines the type of contradiction for given problems and finds the problem-solving objectives and their strategies. Unlike the ARIZ algorithm in TRIZ, the Butterfly model is based on logical proposition, which helps to reduce trial and errors and quickly narrows the problem space for solutions. However, it is hard for problem solvers to define the right propositional relations in the previous Butterfly algorithm. In this research, we propose a contradiction solving algorithm which determines the right problem-solving strategy just with yes or no simple questions. Also, we implement the Butterfly Chatbot based on the proposed algorithm that provides visual and auditory information at the same time and help people solve the contradiction problems. The Butterfly Chatbot can solve contradictions effectively in a short period of time by eliminating arbitrary alternative choices and reducing the problem space.