Ch. 11 Reflection Problem Solving

1. Chapter 11 covers problem solving. It is broken into understanding the problem, problem solving strategies, factors that influence problem solving, and creativity. It relates to what we have learned previously in that when we are problem solving we have to take new info into our working memory and use our top-down processing and info in long-term memory to help us solve problems.
2. I was mostly clear on everything in this chapter because it really relates to what I teach, mathematics. Most of the examples that were given were related to math so I enjoyed the examples. I have talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in other education classes/workshops so I was familiar with those terms also.
3. How would I relate this to my teaching? It is an everyday occurrence to use problem solving in math. My students are always asking where we are going to use the math that they have to learn later on in life. Math teaches the problem solving skills that are needed to be successful in the future. There are several strategies that are used to problem solve. I feel that my students often use the Means-end Heuristic and the analogy approach the most in my math classroom more than the hill-climbing heuristic. The means-end approach breaks a problem into smaller problems in order to get to the end result. The analogy approach uses our previous knowledge to relate the new problem to problems that have been previously done. We use the methods that we used in the previous problems in order to solve the new problem.
I find that some students are able to problem solve better than others. In our discussions this week someone mentioned that it maybe the difference between right brained and left brained people. A person that is right-brained maybe looking at the big picture and will be able to relate a new problem to an old problem even if it is a problem that is worded differently. A left- brained person has a harder time seeing the big picture. I think that this makes sense but it is not entirely true because I am very left-brained but seem to have no problem looking at the big picture when solving math problems.