Abstract:

Self-regulated learning skills are important for a successful mathematical problem solving. The aim of this paper is to present the results of a research made among pre-service primary school students regarding their self-regulation during mathematical problem solving. We studied their attitude towards Mathematics and solving non-routine problems; how they analyze the given task; their self-control and self-monitoring of the cognitive strategies, motivation, and behaviour during problem solving; their self-judgement. The research sample was formed by the students with Preschool and Primary School Pedagogy at Babes-Bolyai University. The research tool was a questionnaire with 28 items related with the research topic, items formulated as affirmations measured on a 4 point Likert scale. The results show that more than one third of the questioned pre-service primary school students likes Mathematics and enjoy solving mathematical problems; two third of the respondents consider Mathematics useful for their future. Almost one third of the students don’t like to solve more problems of the same type, they prefer diversity as regarding problem types. In average almost three quarters of the students has a good approach when analyzing a new problem: they read the text carefully, they reformulate the problem and write down the given and unknown data and the relations between these. They have a good control during problem solving, analyzing if they used all the data, if the solution is correct. But only less then one third of the students try to solve a problem using more methods. They also have a good behaviour when they can’t solve the problem; more then three quarters of the respondents use the following strategies: they reread the text of the problem trying to understand better; they try to find similar worked example; they ask for help.

Keywords:

Self-regulated learning, problem solving, Mathematics Education.