Question

What factors contribute to children’s and adolescents ‘ success in solving problems?

Answer 1

a. Functional Fixedness: Functional fixedness is a type of cognitive bias that involves a tendency to see objects as only working in a particular way. It tends to prevent students from perceiving a wide variety of ways an object can be utilised and impairs their ability to think of novel solutions to problems.

b. Irrelevant or Misleading Information: When students attempt to solve a problem, they should be able to make a correct distinction between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to faulty solutions. Avoiding focus on misleading or irrelevant information is critical for solving problems.

c. Biases and Assumptions: When dealing with a problem, students often tend to find solutions based on their past experiences with similar problems. A pitfall of this is however, that their preconceived ideas may lead them to make faulty assumptions that may hamper the problem solving task.

d. Availability of Resources: Although many students may believe they have the capabilities to solve a certain problem, the resources available to them can often slow-down the process. These resources may be in the form of technology, teacher assistance or access to informative material.

e. External: External factors should also always be taken into account when solving a problem, as factors that may not seem to directly affect the problem can often play a part. These include aspect in a student’s immediate surroundings.