HKIER

Abstract

Two teachers two competent students and two less competent students were given two similar problem-solving tasks of sorting out scrambled sentences so as to reconstruct complete stories. All the subjects were novices in the problem-solving tasks. It was found that each of the subjects used a different strategy, and there was no indication of a consistent difference between the effectiveness of the strategies used by novices of varying problem-solving competence. The results suggest that even within the category of novices, there could be a wide range of competence and a variety of strategies used. Five out of six subjects used working backward strategies and only one of them used a working forward strategy. Four out of six of these novices made use of surface features in the sorting tasks. Even the more competent novices who understood the principle for solving the problem used surface features when they were in difficulty. It seems that when in difficulty, a more competent novice would use more general strategies which are not different from those of a less competent novice. More competent novices used a tighter monitoring system during the problem-solving procedure, and even the least competent novice exhibited an acquisition of better monitoring through practice.

摘要

N.A.