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Teaching students to recognize structural similarities between statistics word problems
Author(s) -
Quilici Jill L.,
Mayer Richard E.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.796
Subject(s) - problem statement , psychology , statement (logic) , word problem (mathematics education) , sort , mathematics education , sorting , test (biology) , mathematical problem , word (group theory) , cognitive psychology , computer science , linguistics , information retrieval , management science , algorithm , paleontology , philosophy , biology , economics
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.