The research issue in this study is how to structure collaborative learning so that it improves solving physics problems more than individual learning. Structured collaborative learning has been compared with individual learning environments with Schoenfeld's problem-solving episodes. Students took a pre-test and a post-test and had the opportunity to solve six physics problems. Ninety-nine students from a secondary school in Shanghai participated in the study. Students who learnt to solve problems in collaboration and students who learnt to solve problems individually with hints improved their problem-solving skills compared with those who learnt to solve the problems individually without hints. However, it was hard to discern an extra effect for students working collaboratively with hints - although we observed these students working in a more structured way than those in the other groups. We discuss ways to further investigate effective collaborative processes for solving physics problems.
The aim of this study is to contribute to the body of knowledge on the use of contextual mathematical problems. Word problems are a predominant genre in mathematics classrooms in assessing students’ ability to solve problems from everyday life. Research on word problems, however, reveals a range of difficulties in their use in mathematics education. In our research we took an alternative approach: we designed image-rich numeracy problems as alternatives for word problems. A set of word problems was modified by systematically replacing the descriptive representation of the problem situation by a more depictive representation and an instrument was designed to measure the effect of this modification on students’ performance. The instrument can measure the effect of this alternative approach in a randomized controlled trial. In order to use the instrument at scale, we made this instrument also usable as a diagnostic test for an upcoming nationwide examination on numeracy. In this article we explain and discuss the design of the instrument and the validation of its intended uses.
