Problem solving (Education)

Professor Peyton Wilde has an enviable life teaching sociology at an idyllic liberal arts college—yet she is troubled by a sense of fading inspiration. One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates—two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer—Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.

In 2015, a diverse crowd from all corners of the planet convened at Schloss Leopoldskron, in Salzburg, Austria, to identify and address emerging issues at the creative intersection of neuroscience and art.
No small feat, you might imagine. At the end of the five-day program, however, participants including neuroscientists, artists, musicians, scholars, and journalists came together and made a vow to improve artistic and scientific collaboration.

During the program, entitled The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation?, participants came up with ideas involving imagination hubs, artist-in-residence programs, and the creation of an open-access interdisciplinary journal to bring artists and scientists closer together.

Among this crowd of 50 was author, sociologist, and arts-based researcher Patricia Leavy. At the time, Leavy had written 17 books – fiction and non-fiction - and was editing five book series. She was a recognized leader in arts-based and qualitative research. Her experience in Salzburg left her with the premise for a new novel: Spark.
Salzburg Global recently caught up with Leavy to discuss her new book, her experience attending a program at Salzburg Global Seminar, and how she drew inspiration.

What could two people stand to gain from sharing a taxi ride? We aimed to explore the extent to which this challenging yet accessible financial context might stimulate students’ mathematical exploration of multiplicative thinking and proportional reasoning. Through teaching experiment methodology, data were collected from 37 Year 5 and 6 students (10–12 years of age) in suburban Melbourne. The findings reveal that the majority of the students had some intuitive understanding of how to solve a financial problem that involved rate, and at least half of them used either multiplicative thinking or proportional reasoning. While the study reported is small and cannot claim to be representative, the findings confirm that well-designed financial problems have the potential to unveil sophisticated mathematical understandings among primary school students. This research demonstrates what young adolescents can do prior to formal exposure to ratio and proportion as part of the curriculum.

Este trabajo presenta el modelo de correlaciones complejas resultado de la interacción de los factores que estructuran la capacidad de modelización con los que conforman la capacidad de resolución de problemas. Los resultados muestran que las dos capacidades están moderadamente relacionadas y además, indican que los factores más correlacionados son los referidos a la información cualitativa, como el factor: leer tendencias y correlaciones en el caso de la capacidad de modelización, y los factores: análisis, y delimitación del problema en el caso de la capacidad de resolución de problemas.

How can we make better decisions to solve complex problems? How can we reach for unseen ideas and inventions? A sustainable and coherent future is embedded in coherent decision making, successful problem solving and radical innovating. Solving the seemingly impossible and creating something outside of our current imagination cannot be reached just with novel combinations of existing components. We must exceed the known. Often we do not realize that current problem scoping narrows down possible future solutions. We ignore the potentials we consider impossible. However, there is a vast untapped potential of the human mind. Studies made with creative and highly intuitive individuals show that the boundaries of the mind can be surpassed for example through intentional intuiting. Intentional intuiting opens new ways to acquire information, recognize meaningful outliers and enhance creativity. People who can leverage intuiting and resilient thinking create a head start compared with analytical thinkers. These types of skills are trainable and can work as drivers for the sustainable wellbeing of future societies.

The aim of this research is to examine the reflective thinking skill of students with good mathematical problem-solving skill with respect to general problem solving. A qualitative research technique, case studying, was used
in this study. Three students who were good at solving math problems were participants in this research. Individual
problem-solving activities, group problem-solving activities, semi-structured interviews, and video and voice recordings were used as data collection tools. Received data were analyzed by using a descriptive analysis approach. To analyze how the students perform reflection during the examination process, a conceptual framework was used for descriptive analysis by considering five factors, such as knowledge, experience, feeling/emotion, context, and a group friend. These factors correspond to the reflection in a three-dimensional theoretical framework that Hong
and Choi (2011) introduced in their studies. As a result of the research, it has been determined that the students
have successfully reflected on the themes of knowledge, experience and context. In addition, students were able to
reflect on feelings / emotions and group-friend themes. Despite all these, it has also been seen that students had difficulty in make reflection, they make indeficient reflection or they couldn’t make any reflections within various
indications.

Word problems are an important component of the curriculum, they require concentration and detailed work to reach their solution. Also, their role on critiacal thinking is undisputable. Since solving word problems is a complex process, reading comprehension is an aid factor in improving the ability to succeed in solving them.
The purpose of the current study is to investigate the impact of mathematical vocabulary and students’ reading comprehension  in improving mathematical problem solving skills.
This study is focused on a primary research questions  “What is the impact of reading comprehension on students’ word problem solving skills?”.
To answer this research question, was used research in action with quasi-experiment design . Thirty-six children of 4th grade at the primary school “Hilmi Rakovica” participated in the research, where I also held the practical lesson. All the students that participated on the study were tested in math word problems twice, before the intervention and after it. As a intervention have been utilized teaching strategies focused on reading comprehension, such as mathematical vocabulary and other activities presented in the appendices.
From the results of the research it was concluded that problem solving skills were improved according to using mathematical vocabulary. Although the difference between the results of the pre-test and the post-test were statistically small, however, there was an improved performance throughout the classes and the post-test .

La construcción del conocimiento en la resolución de problemas es un proceso cognitivo de análisis para entender el problema, diseñar e implementar estrategias de solución y verificar las soluciones; es un proceso en donde se confronta el conocimiento adquirido con la realimentación dada por el arrastre del ambiente de geometría dinámica Cabri 3D que permite pensar de acuerdo a las reglas de las transformaciones perspectivas y las reglas de conformación de representaciones geométricas.

Purpose: The purpose of this grounded theory research consisting of five collective phenomenological studies was to generate a theory that explains how exemplar leaders from five different fields use six domains of conflict transformation behaviors to establish common ground and produce breakthrough results.  The six domains of behavior are communication, collaboration, ethics, emotional intelligence, problem solving, and process. 
Methodology: The sample was composed of 75 exemplar leaders from five different professional fields and included an analysis of over 1,300 pages of interview transcripts as the main data source for the study. 
Findings: The results found that exemplar leaders establish, build, or repair relationships with traditional oppositional stakeholders as a method of inoculating against, mitigating, or resolving conflict.  Communication was also identified as the primary domain for engaging stakeholders in collaboration, process, and problem solving.  Exemplar leaders’ communication efforts were influenced by their emotional intelligence skill set, ethical behavior, and enforcement of a positive ethical climate.  The greater the number of activities combined and the higher the quality interactions between the activities from the six domains of behavior created the conditions such that a leader had a greater opportunity for successfully transforming conflict, achieving common ground, and producing breakthrough results.

Los problemas de demostración, vistos como un ejemplo de la resolución de problemas, demandan poner en juego distintos conocimientos y habilidades en el uso de la geometría dinámica cuando se cuenta con el apoyo de esta. Apoyados en dos grupos de estudiantes para profesor de matemáticas con un nivel de formación matemática distinta, mostramos que el proceso de resolución de un problema deja ver estrategias de solución distintas, sin embargo, algo llamativo de los resultados obtenidos, es que los estudiantes con formación matemática inferior muestran mejores resultados. El objetivo de este documento es mostrar que los conocimientos con los que un individuo cuenta y su conocimiento del software no son los únicos aspectos relevantes en el proceso de resolución.

Los problemas de demostración, vistos como una instancia de la resolución de problemas, demandan en el individuo que los afronta que ponga en juego distintos conocimientos y habilidades instrumentales cuando cuenta con el apoyo de la geometría dinámica. Sin embargo, como se muestra en esta investigación, el conjunto de conocimientos con los que un individuo cuenta y su grado de instrumentalización del software no se convierten en los únicos aspectos relevantes en el marco del proceso de resolución. Aspectos metacognitivos como el control, la regulación y la evaluación de las acciones ejecutadas pueden llevar a que un problema de demostración sea resuelto pertinentemente, aun cuando no se cuente con un gran repertorio teórico o que, inclusive, aun cuando se cuente con los conocimientos pertinentes y necesarios, el resultado obtenido o proceso de resolución no sea afortunado. Apoyados en dos grupos con un nivel de formación matemática distinta, mostramos que la metacognición se convierte en un aspecto que puede llevar a un grupo, con un conocimiento matemático reducido, a obtener mejores resultados que un grupo que cuenta con un conocimiento profundo de la disciplina.

The Birthday Party Patterns problem incorporates mathematical representa- tions, patterns, and sense making to foster
students’ algebraic reasoning. Teresa Hoppe is a second-grade teacher at Fort Worth Country Day in Fort Worth, Texas. Hoppe implemented the Birthday Party Pattern problem with a group of nine second graders with whom she worked weekly on problem solving and extensions of the mathematics being studied in class.

Little attention has been paid to reference skills in L2 written text production in comparison with L2 text comprehension. This may be explained by the fact that the relation between L2 text production and the process of consultation of external resources has not yet been the object of exhaustive research, largely because text production is viewed exclusively as an encoding activity. The place of the consultation of external resources in text production will only be recognised when the latter is viewed as an encoding activity continuously interrupted by decoding sequences when internal support fails and additional information is required. To obtain this additional information, writers must turn to external resources and engage in decoding. The consultation of external resources is thus a conscious problem-solving strategy which is closely related to one’s definition of a problem, knowledge and beliefs about external resources, and attitude towards their use.
In this article we present a cognitive model of the problem-solving process in L2 text production which includes the use of reference sources. Using this model, we have analysed how students envisage, and carry out, their problem-solving processes in L2 written text production. A customised questionnaire was used to obtain data on students’ beliefs concerning the relation between internal and external support; their perceived knowledge of external resources; and their attitude to reference skills training. This data was contrasted to the problem-solving processes actually carried out by the students. Results suggest that, in theory, students correctly describe the stages of the consultation process. In practice, however, some fail to complete the process at a certain stage. Detecting when this happens allows us to design appropriate reference skills training. 
Key words: text production, L2, reference skills, dictionary, problem-solving

The literacy movement has not been widely applied to the learning. This study aims to determine the effect of the application of disciplinary literacy instruction to cognitive learning outcomes, especially in problem-solving abil-ity. The population of this study is all senior high school in Sleman, Indonesia and have implemented the literacy movement in habituation and develop-ment. Two classes in SMAN 2 Sleman becomes sample with experimental and comparative classes. Both classes performed daily tests on two consecu-tive materials to see the abilities in the two classes. The results were analyzed using SPSS program and showed normal and homogeneous results and sig-nificance values were above of 0.05 were 0.968 and 0.483 respectively. This indicates that there is no difference in the cognitive learning outcomes of the two classes. The research instruments consist of the syllabus, learning implementation plan, article, student worksheet, and questions. Validation used in the form of content validation to two experts and empirical validation to 150 students. The analytical technique used to analyze the influence of the application of disciplinary literacy instruction on problem-solving ability is ANOVA test at significance level 0.05. The results showed that both classes had normal and homogenous learning outcomes and significance value of 0.009, the value is below the level of significance 0.05. This number indicates that there is the influence of application of disciplinary literacy instruction on problem-solving ability in the electrolyte and non-electrolyte solutions material.
Keywords: Disciplinary literacy instruction, problem-solving ability, cognitive learning outcomes, effect

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of Alternative Energy Resources Curriculum on the problem-solving skills and achievement levels of the 7th-grade of primary school students. This study has been conducted with a total of 24 students in two classes equal to each other in the first term of 2009-2010 academic year in ITU‟s Development
Foundation Private Primary School of Natuk Birkan. These groups are formed according to their teachers‟ views and the students‟ grades, taken from the examinations at the end of the first unit for a science education course. These classes are divided into two groups: Control and experimental group. While students in the experimental group learn Science Education Course with the problem-solving ability, control group learns this lesson with traditional methods. Problem-solving ability and the student achievement test are applied to the students during their study. Scales are applied to the students before the practice as a pre-test and after the practice as a post-test. After six weeks the achievement test has been applied to the students as a retention test. For analyzing the data, Mann Whitney U tests and Related Groups Wilcoxon tests are used. At the end of the study, the following are obtained:
1. The level of students‟ success, according to the results of the problem-solving experiment group and traditional control group‟s pre and protest, any significant difference with contrast to each other is not found.
2. The ability of problem-solving, according to the results of the problem-solving experiment group and traditional control group‟s pre and protest, any significant difference with contrast to each other is not found.
3. According to a result of retention test, between problem-solving ability approach experimental group and the traditional control group a considerable difference in favour of the experimental group is found.
4. According to a result of retention test, between problem-solving ability experimental group and the traditional control group a considerable difference in favour of the experimental group has been found.