Professional Documents
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Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving
Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving
Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving
Research Foundations
John Bransford Vanderbilt University
Robert Sherwood Vanderbilt University
Nancy Vye University of Western Ontario,
London, Canada
John Rieser Vanderbilt University
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
ABSTRACT: The goal of effectively teaching reasoning, makes progress quite beyond his natural powers" (p. 125).
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
thinking, and problem solving is now being pursued with Similar ideas were espoused by Sir Francis Bacon, who
new vigor. Research of the past decade provides productive favored the study of mathematics as a remedy to students'
ways of viewing the processes underlying these capabilities lack of attention (Mann, 1979, p. 13). In the 1800s, many
and their development. Bransford, Sherwood, Vye, and educators argued that the study of Latin would develop
Rieser focus on two general research approaches. Thefirst the mental discipline necessary to learn in any domain.
derives from studies of individuals who are experts in par- Research conducted during the 1940s and 1950s
ticular domains and emphasizes the role of domain-spe- (e,g., Dunker, 1945; Katona, 1940; Wertheimer, 1959),
cific knowledge. A second emphasizes general strategic and especially during the 1970s and 1980s, goes consid-
and metacognitive knowledge; ideally, people who develop erably beyond a general emphasis on "mental discipline"
the ability to learn new information and to monitor their as the active ingredient underlying effective thinking and
current levels of proficiency will be able to function more problem solving. Our goal in this article is to discuss some
effectively in a variety of contexts. Bransford and his col- of the relevant research and to consider its implications
leagues conclude that many existing programs that are for the issue of teaching thinking and problem solving.
designed to teach thinking and problem solving involve Our major emphasis is on the need for both (a) general
an emphasis on general skills and strategies in contrast problem solving strategies and (b) specific knowledge that
to domain-specific knowledge. They argue that these pro- is organized in ways that are appropriate for individual
grams can be strengthened by focusing more explicitly on needs.
domain knowledge, especially when students are helped
to understand how different ways of learning new knowl- Beyond Mental Discipline: An
edge can affect their abilities to solve relevant problems. Illustrative Study
--The Editors
A study conducted by Ericsson, Chase, and Faloon (1980)
provides an excellent illustration of how modern analyses
of problem solving go beyond a mere emphasis on mental
The topic of teaching thinking and problem solving is discipline. They worked with a college student who
currently receiving a great deal of attention. One reason wanted to solve a basic memory problem: to remember
is that increasingly fast-paced changes in society make it long strings of digits. The student worked on this problem
necessary for people to think for themselves and to solve for over one year. Given a sequence of numbers such as
novel problems (Simon, 1980); another is that assessments 74189426, for example, the task was to repeat the num-
of student achievement suggest that today's students may bers in the exact order in which they were heard. Most
be failing to develop effective thinking and problem-solv- adults can remember from 6 to 9 numbers with little
ing skills (e.g., National Assessment of Educational Prog- difficulty (e.g:, Miller, 1956); the.student who participated
ress, 1983). in the Ericsson et al. study was no exception to this pattern
Books such as Mann's (1979) history of cognitive when he first began the experiment. By the end of the
process training remind us that the goal of teaching study, however, the student's digit span had increased in
thinking and problem solving is not unique to the 1980s. length from 7 digits to over 70 digits. This represents an
Attempts to achieve this goal have been espoused for cen- incredible improvement in performance. What happened
turies and have stimulated a variety of suggestions for that allowed such a feat?
increasing thinking. Many have focused on the need to The critical data in the Ericsson et al. (1980) study
develop "mental discipline" by subjecting students to the involved the student's ability to remember letter strings
rigors of learning difficult subjects such as mathematics rather than number strings. Although the student could
and Latin. Mann (1979) cited Plato's arguments: "Arith- remember strings of over 70 numbers by the end of the
metic stirs up him who is by nature sleepy and dull, and experiment, he could remember only about 7 letters. This
makes him quick to learn, retentive, and shrewd. He shows that his general capacity for holding information
opment and utilization of an appropriate knowledge base. produce the game (using new pieces and a new board) as
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These theories have important implications for teaching. accurately as they could. Results indicated the chess mas-
If a student practiced remembering number strings yet ters were excellent at this short-term memory task,
made little progress, a mere emphasis on trying to exert whereas less experienced players had considerable diffi-
some "mental discipline" in order to "build mental mus- culty. Subsequent studies (Chase & Simon, 1973) dem-
cle" would probably be less than useful. It would be more onstrated that the masters' superior performance was not
effective to help the student acquire knowledge that could due to a superior short-term memory capacity. When
provide a basis for encoding numerical information, and supplied with chess pieces on a board that were placed
to help him or her automatize the ability to encode nu- at random, the chess masters were no better than others
merical information from the perspective of that domain at remembering which piece went where; thus, their
(e.g., Schneider & Fisk, 1982; Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977). knowledge base did not help them encode randomly
Of course, the results of the Ericsson et al. (1980) study placed pieces. When the chess configurations were mean-
do not suggest that attempts to be disciplined are un- ingful, however, the experts were better able to perceive
important for the development of problem-solving abil- relevant patterns than were the less experienced players,
ities. The argument is simply that exhortations to try hence their abilities to remember were enhanced.
harder are not enough. Studies comparing experts and less experienced in-
dividuals have also been made in areas such as engineer-
The Role of Specific Knowledge ing, computer programming, social science, reading
The preceding study by Ericsson et al. (1980) is one of a comprehension, physics, medical diagnosis, and mathe-
large number of studies that illustrate the role of specific matics (e.g., R. Anderson, 1977, 1984; Bhaskar & Simon,
knowledge for problem solving. A number of researchers 1977; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; deKleer & Brown,
have provided insights into the role of knowledge by 1981; Greeno, 1980; Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Si-
comparing experts with less experienced individuals. In mon, 1980; Lesgold, Feltovich, Glaser, & Wang, 1981;
a classic study by deGroot (1965), an attempt was made Linn, 1985; Mayer, 1983, 1985; Resnick, 1982; Riley,
to understand why chess masters were better at chess than Greeno, & Heller, 1983; Trabasso Stein, & Johnson, 1981;
were skilled yet less accomplished players. One of de- Voss, Greene, Post, & Penner, 1983). In each of these
Groot's initial hypotheses was that masters could think studies, effective problem solving has been shown to de-
of more possible moves than could novices; deGroot also pend strongly on the nature and organization of the
believed that masters could think further ahead than oth- knowledge available to individuals (see J. Anderson, 1983;
ers and hence could calculate the strengths and weaknesses Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977; Schank & Abelson, 1977,
of various moves. He explored these hypotheses by pre- for theories of knowledge representation).
senting masters and less experienced players with ex-
amples from chess games and asking them to choose the Understanding Developmental and
next move. He also asked the participants to think aloud Intraindividual Differences
as they attempted to make their choices. Contrary to ini- An emphasis on the role of knowledge has had important
implications for theories of development and of individual
Experiments reported in this article were supported in part by Contract
differences. Earlier theories of development such as
MDA903-84-C-0218 from the Army Research Institute, by Grant Piagetian stage theories (e.g., Piaget, 1970) assumed that
G0083C0052 from the U.S. Department of Education, and by a grant development consists of the addition of capacities to the
from the IBM Corporation. We are indebted to Beverly Conner, Lynda child's repetoire. Newer views of development also ac-
Berry, Linda Karwedsky, and Jackie Welch for their outstandin~ editorial knowledge that children become more effective at orga-
help.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John nizing information, solving problems, and so forth (e.g.,
Bransford, Department of Psychology, Vanderhilt University, Nashville, A. Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983).
TN 37203. However, theorists who are exploring these newer views
below college students. However, when asked to remember Access and the Representation of Knowledge
the positions of chess pieces on a chess board, the per- It is important to note that theorists who emphasize the
formance of the children exceeded the performance of role of knowledge in problem solving go considerably
the college students (the latter were not experienced at beyond the idea that relevant knowledge either is or is
playing chess). Similarly, Lindberg (1980) found that not available. Knowledge theorists argue that an impor-
children show more evidence of clustering in a recall task tant prerequisite for problem solving is that knowledge
than do college students when the information is especially must be activated when needed. The fact that people have
meaningful to the children. These data suggest that pro- acquired knowledge that is relevant to a particular situ-
cesses such as clustering are often a relatively automatic ation provides no guarantee that access will occur (e.g.,
consequence of previously acquired knowledge. Bransford & Johnson, 1972, Experiment 2; Dooling &
The availability of relevant knowledge has also been Lachman, 1971). Many years ago, Alfred North White-
shown to affect children's abilities to conserve number head (1929) warned about the dangers of inert knowl-
and volume, to make inferences and take nonegocentric edge-knowledge that is accessed only in a restricted set
perspectives, and to select task-appropriate strategies. For of contexts even though it is applicable to a wide variety
example, Price-Williams, Gordon, and Ramirez (1969) of domains. He also argued that traditional educational
and Adjei (1977) studied the conservation of clay by chil- practice tended to produce knowledge that remained inert
dren of pottery-making parents. These children were ad- (see also Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1985; A. Brown, 1985;
vanced in this task, possibly because their familiarity with A. Brown & Campione, 1981).
the medium reduced attentional demands; they therefore An implication of Whitehead's position is that some
had enough attentional resources to notice simultaneous ways of imparting information result in knowledge rep-
changes in length, width, and thickness. Gelman's (1969) resentations that are not especially accessible. As an il-
classic work on number conservation provides additional lustration, consider the following question that was posed
information about children's abilities to decentrate and to college freshmen (Bransford, Sherwood, Kinzer, &
coordinate information. These abilities are evident for Hasselbring, 1985): "Try to remember what you learned
small numbers of items. When the number of items be- about the concept of logarithms. Can you think of any
come too large, the information-processing requirements way that they might make problem solving simpler than
seem to overwhelm children's abilities to perform number it would be if they did not exist?"
conservation tasks. The college students who were asked this question
Other researchers have explored the conditions under were able to remember something about logarithms.
which children can make transitive inferences and take However, most viewed them only as exercises in math
multiple perspectives. Bryant and Trabasso ( 1971) dem- class rather than as useful inventions that simplify prob-
onstrated that young children could perform transitive lem solving. These students had not been helped to un-
inference problems when the relational terms used in the derstand the kinds of problems for which logarithms are
problems were well learned. Similarly, Rieser and Heiman useful. Similarly, many students seem to learn to calculate
(1982) found that one- to three-year olds are not destined the answers to physics problems yet fail to apply their
to be slavishly egocentric or bound by rote learning when formal physics knowledge when encountering everyday
given tasks involving spatial knowledge. In addition, phenomena. They need to learn more about the condi-
Donaldson (1978) reported studies indicating that young tions under which their formal knowledge applies (e.g.,
children can take the perspective of other, hypothetical di Sessa, 1982).
observers when the spatial layout is kept simple and
meaningful. Finally, Siegler and Shrager (1984) provided Studies of Access
an elegant analysis of how differences in the representation A number of investigators have begun to conduct con-
of knowledge affect children's decisions to use different trolled studies of relationships between access and the
seems to be much more likely to occur. must therefore act on this idea by actually rereading and
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A. Brown et al., 1983), it seems clear that this type of tance of helping students develop a conceptual and prac-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
training also affects the nature and organization of the tical understanding of scientific reasoning and inquiry
knowledge acquired by learners. The acts of (a) informing skills rather than merely memorize scientific facts (e.g.,
them about uses of strategies and (b) allowing them to Aarons, 1984a, 1984b; Lawson, 1985; Renner & Lawson,
practice and evaluate the effects, help students "condi- 1973). In contrast, many descriptions of attempts to teach
tionalize" their knowledge. As noted in our earlier dis- thinking by programming computers in Logo (e.g., Pap-
cussion of access and the problem of inert knowledge, ert, 1980, 1985) place little explicit emphasis on the need
such knowledge organizations increase the probability to systematically help students reflect on their approaches
that relevant information will be accessed when needed. to programming and to think about these activities as
By placing more emphasis on the systematic development instances of more general problem-solving strategies.
of well-organized knowledge in addition to executive Some researchers argue that this lack of explicit focus on
processes, it may be possible to increase considerably the mctacognitive processes may be a major reason why ev-
speed with which people can become able to think effec- idence of general effects of Logo programming on think-
tively in a variety of knowledge-rich domains (see also ing ability have proved to be so difficult to find (e.g.,
N. Stein, in press). Bransford, Stein, DeMos, & Littlefield, 1986; Dclclos,
Take the example of deciding whethcr to buy a soft- Littleficld, & Bransford, 1985; Pea & Kurland, 1984).
top jeep. Recently, one of the authors bought one after An especially promising aspect of metacognitive ap-
weighing the pleasure of open-air summer rides against proaches to teaching is that they can be used to transform
the inconveniences of drafty winter rides and having to basic fact- and skill-oriented activities into lessons in-
raise the top manually. Three days later, when the radio volving thinking. For example, Hasselbring, Goin, and
was stolen, the oversight of not considering the soft-top Bransford (1985) discussed work with math-delayed fifth
jeep's vulnerability to theft became apparent. and sixth graders who were working on arcade-like soft-
There are several ways to think about the preceding ware designed to give them practice at basic addition
shortcomings in thinking about the jeep. At one level we problems such as 7 + 8. The arcade program awarded
can fault the individual's attempts to systematically search points for speed and accuracy. All the students wanted
memory in order to access relevant categories for eval- to increase their scores. However, most had little idea of
uation. Our decision maker may have been too impulsive how to "debug" their current approaches to the game.
and hence prematurely ended his memory search. On the For example, the vast majority paid little attention to the
other hand, something needs to guide one's search of fact that they often counted on their fingers and hence
memory. The research with chess masters discussed earlier could not significantly increase their speed until they
suggests that they search memory selectively rather than moved from productive to reproductive strategies
evaluate every possible move. The ability to search selec- (Grceno, 1978). Furthermore, students knew the answers
tively should be affected by the organization or represen- to some problems (e.g., 5 + 5) and hence needed to mem-
tation of knowledge. For example, the knowledge rep- orize answers to only a subset of the problems. Neverthe-
resentation of a person who has owned a soft-top jeep less, they did not spontaneously attempt to identify the
that was broken into will have information such as "easily set of problems that would be most beneficial for them
accessible to burglars" linked directly to jeep. Because of to practice at home. With specific guidance from the
this organization of the knowledge base, failures to assess teacher, the students were prompted to view the arcade
such information should be much less likely to occur. game as a problem-solving situation, and they were helped
to debug their current approaches to the problem of in-
Metacognition and Teaching creasing their scores. Without the teaching, it is doubtful
Research on both metacognitive, or control, processes that the students would have taken a "higher order think-
and domain-specific knowledge has important implica- ing" approach to the development of "lower order" skills
tions for teaching thinking and problem solving. Consider (for additional discussion of the role of teaching in the
number of failure experiences in academic settings (for different knowledge representations (e.g., J. Anderson,
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
example, see Covington, 1985; Dweck & Elliott, 1983). 1983; Simon, 1980) should provide the basis for well-
However, Feuerstein et al. also emphasized the need to articulated theories about conditions under which access
"bridge" from the Instrumental Enrichment exercises to occurs.
specific areas such as mathematics, reading, and so forth An emphasis on access also highlights the role of
(for example, see Bransford, Stein, Arbitman-Smith, & perceptual learning and pattern recognition. Simon
Vye, 1985). Nevertheless, it can often be difficult for (1980) noted this by pointing out the importance of help-
teachers to bridge to other areasmespecially if these are ing problem solvers learn to differentiate problem types
being taught by different teachers. Because of this, one and the relation of different problem types to solutions.
can often find evidence for positive effects of Instrumental The research illustrating more sophisticated performance
Enrichment in the context of everyday tasks such as plan- of learners and problem solvers in familiar compared to
ning a field trip yet see much less evidence in the context unfamiliar domains also supports the idea that perceptual
of achievement tests--tests that generally presuppose the learning may play an important role in problem solving.
availability of rich knowledge domains (for example, Ar- The Gibsons (e.g., Gibson, 1969, 1982; Gibson & Gibson,
bitman-Smith, Haywood, & Bransford, 1985). 1955) emphasized that perceptual learning involves dif-
Programs such as Philosophy for Children (e.g., ferentiating the features and dimensions in situations
Lipman, 1985) and Guided Design (Wales & Stager, 1977) where there is variation and learning the significance of
provide prototypes for teaching thinking in the context those variations to the problem at hand. Many teaching
of domains such as science, art, engineering, and so forth. activities fail to educate students' attention to the relevant
There certainly seems to be room for more approaches features that are critical to solving different problems and
such as these. In mathematics, for example, evidence sug- problem types, and research is needed to determine how
gests that children often make a variety of systematic er- to educate attention. Teaching often involves telling
rors because they rather blindly learn procedures rather learners the relevant information and asking them to
than understand how the information being presented combine it in some way to arrive at a problem situation.
simplifies the solution to important, real-world problems For example, students may be asked to solve word prob-
(e.g., J. Brown & Burton, 1978; Clement, 1982; Resnick, lems in arithmetic for which they are poor at differen-
in press; Sleeman, 1983; Soloway, Lochhead, & Clement, tiating parts of the problem situation that are numerically
1982). Similarly, students learning science are often asked relevant from those that are irrelevant to its solution (Lit-
to memorize information about density, displacement, tlefield & Rieser, 1985).
and so forth yet are not helped to understand its value Teaching without a systematic emphasis on percep-
for interpreting everyday situations and for solving prob- tual learning can account for access failures that lead to
lems. They therefore acquire facts rather than conceptual poor generalization of learning. For example, clinical
tools (e.g., Bransford, in press; Bransford, Sherwood, & psychology students often learn to diagnose psychological
Sturdevant, in press; di Sessa, 1982; Lochhead & Clement, syndromes by reading case descriptions. However, many
1979; Perkins, in press). case descriptions suggest situations (e.g., the client is
Theories of access should provide an important "anxious" and somewhat "hostile") that represent outputs
framework for helping students learn to think and solve of an expert's pattern-recognition process. Therefore,
problems. For example, it seems clear that instruction students who can correctly diagnose clinical syndromes
that emphasizes memory for a variety of facts and defi- from verbally stated symptoms in the classroom may fail
nitions (a large number of introductory courses fit this to transfer that diagnostic skill to actual interview situ-
definition) will s e e m effective if we simply test students ations where the symptoms are not stated so clearly. Re-
on this information. However, data reviewed in the present cent advances in interactive videotape and videodisc
article suggest that this information will generally remain technology make available rapid access and review of
inert even though it is relevant for various problems. video (e.g., Bransford, Sherwood, & Hasselbring, 1985).
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