Can problem-solving be taught? September 27, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning , trackbackThe National Curriculum for ICT requires the development of independent thinking and problem solving skills, but I see very little of this happening in practise. Prescriptive teaching, which is sometimes necessary, is over deployed in my opinion. Do this, do that, click here, then click there. Last week I introduced a year 6 ICT lesson on spreadsheet modelling. I know that this class have had good teaching all about spreadsheets and the use of formulae in year 5 so I thought they ought to be capable of doing a little bit of thinking for themselves. So as an experiment, instead of spending 10 minutes showing them what to do, followed by a period in which they try, with assistance, to reproduce the same results, finishing up with a hasty plenary if you’re lucky - I negotiated with the class teacher to abandon that standard lesson structure and instead set them a simple task. I wrote on the whiteboard:
TASK 1: Design a spreadsheet which will calculate the 4 times table, showing results for 1 to 10.
You have 10 minutes to do this.
Result: Initially a lot of complaints, “what do we have to do?” “aren’t you going to help us?”
Then eventually they settled down and started trying to get the work done. I pointed out that the word calculate was emphasised, then after about 8 minutes, some children were claiming to have done it. I went around the room and uncovered that without exception they all “cheated” by laboriously typing in a completed times table rather than using a simple formula.
Thinking on my feet……
“Time is up. Now I want you change it into a seven times table”
They seemed to think they could do that
“You have 1 minute”
uproar!
I left them to it for a bit and then started the countdown.
“Right, nobody has managed to complete the task so I’ll show you some techniques which you could have used.”
The difference being that they actually watched and listened and learned for once. Then they went away and worked hard at trying to use the techniques they’d been shown.
I called this article “can problem-solving be taught” and I’m a long way off that yet, but I feel it’s a start.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Andy-brilliant!! When I first started teaching in this country I found the prescriptive curriculum and tight HOD control very hard to take-the way you took your lesson was much more like what I got up to in NZ-I bet the kids left that lesson feeling better than a boring list of instructions!
I know exactly how you feel since I try the same sorts of thing myself at Junior level. I have been using Logo (Textease Turtle) for a year now. I have refused to give much in the way of precise prescriptive teaching but do introduce commands and more importantly show how I investigate commands. The children have built mazes and are now working on a variety of independent projects. Teaching really does go a lot quicker when the children see the relevance personally but it seems to me the curriculum is not designed with relevance in mind.
I find this very interesting. Prescriptive teaching is also a plague in France, at all levels.
Well done, and let us know about your next experiments.
I love LOGO. We use a version called “Maths Links” which is quite old and runs under Mac Classic but it still functions as the only opportunity on the primary curriculum to do a bit of constructivist programming, well, together with spreadsheets I suppose.
I have a book here called “LOGO - a guide to learning through programming” Peter Goodyear, 1984 which has an excellent chapter 2.5 entitled “The Mythical Software Famine”. He also writes about divergent vs convergent learning.