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An Analysis of Students' Learning Through Problem Solving:

In the second week of class, I introduce a problem that depicts a seventh grade science classroom in which a large number of children are doing poorly. The problem description includes information about the teacher's learning goals, her teaching methods, and student performance on quizzes, tests and experiments. My students investigate the situation, identify a specific problem and then propose ways to help the teacher deal with the specific dilemma. This open-ended problem situation can be approached in a variety of ways. For instance, if students focus on how the seventh grader's performed on an experiment, they might pursue a problem about scientific thinking. Or, if they focus on the misconceptions depicted in test answers, they might pose a problem related to conceptual development and change. However, once they define a manageable problem, their goal was to devise ways to help the teacher deal with the specific dilemma.

Intended learning outcomes. This problem is the focal point for studying concepts and principles related to learning and cognition. (see handout.) As a result of working through the problem, students should:

1.understand concepts and principles related to learning as a constructive process, higher-order thinking, thinking dispositions, strategies for learning, and metacognition.

2. be better able to apply these concepts and principles to analyze and solve typical classroom learning dilemmas.

Instructional sequence.  Students worked on the problem for approximately three weeks in four overlapping phases:

In conjunction with direct work on the problem, students also completed reading and writing assignments, and we spent part of the each class session discussing fundamental concepts and principles of learning theory and relevant concepts in cognitive psychology.