What’s the Big Idea: Engaging students in solving complex, ill-structured problems without the provision of support structures can be a productive exercise in failure.
Research questions/Hypothesis, methods used in research/conclusions: Eleventh-grade students were asked to solve problems on Newtonian kinematics. Two groups were compared: one who initially received ill-structured problems as a group, followed by well-structured problems individually, the other had both well-structured problems as a group and individually. After this, all students were given ill-structured problems and those who initially received those outperformed those who always had well-structured problems.
Research questions/Hypothesis, methods used in research/conclusions: Eleventh-grade students were asked to solve problems on Newtonian kinematics. Two groups were compared: one who initially received ill-structured problems as a group, followed by well-structured problems individually, the other had both well-structured problems as a group and individually. After this, all students were given ill-structured problems and those who initially received those outperformed those who always had well-structured problems.