Abstract:

Mathematics has always been the subject of many debates, especially in relation to the process of education. One of the questions in the mathematics education is orientation on developing the key competences because it is the important characteristic of quality teaching. For this reason, many of the world's leading experts agree that the core of key competencies for life and work in the future world is not only the acquisition of basic literacy (i.e., linguistic, mathematical, science, ICT), but the ability to solve problems as a common part of everyday life. It’s because in these tasks the elements and concepts are interconnected not only from mathematics but from different fields, requiring different solutions.

The development of the competence to solve problems can be in teaching mathematics quite well aligned with a specific content - when dealing with emerging competence to solve problems, students must virtually use their industry knowledge and skills. Troubleshooting following school content can increase the attractiveness of the curriculum and points to its interconnection with real life, both can lead to its deeper understanding. This kind of developing competences is mainly created by the teacher in special educational situations. These situations represent a specific time and place in which a student is exposed to the teacher’s influences, having their specific learning objective, to which the student reacts in some way.

A look at how the competence to solve problems can be developed in teaching and what influences this process is one of the main efforts of this paper. The introduction part contains the theoretical definition of the concepts of educational situations and competence to solve problems. This theoretical basis is followed by the qualitative research focused on the analysis of competence to solve problems in specific educational situations, implemented on high school students in the Czech Republic. This analysis includes an experiment, interviews and personal questionnaires. The data are qualitatively processed and contribute to understanding the use of educational situations that develop competence to solve problems in teaching process.

Keywords:

Mathematics, competence, problem solving, educational situation, teaching, students.