Anticipating Student Responses to Improve Problem Solving
I have been a Mathematics Teacher and Educator throughout all four publications of the Standards documents (NCTM 1991, 1995, 1989, and 2000). Over the years, while concentrating on improving various aspects of my teaching, specifically, improving my students' ability to problem solve, I have been perplexed to see students pick numbers out of a problem and perform an operation with no regard for the context. To address this issue by teaching problem-solving lessons made me realize that I did not know the difference between students solving a problem and actual problem solving. A lesson beginning with a problem or task does not make it a problem-solving lesson, especially when students would inevitably solve it the way I had intended. Instead of problem solving, my students were trying to figure out what I was thinking. To prevent the temptation of leading students in this way of thinking required careful planning of problem-solving lessons.