Gyöngyvér Molnár : Barriers of knowledge application – 13 and 17 year-old students' complex problem solving competencies

The changes in the evaluation of knowledge, i.e. the growing appreciation of applicable knowledge (Csapó, 2002; Molnár, 2006) resulted in an increase in the number of researches investigating the quality and applicability of knowledge acquired in school (Frensch and Funke, 1995). Consequently, knowledge transfer and problem-solving have become central issues again (OECD, 2004). The investigation presented here can be viewed as a continuation of previous researches dealing with the application of knowledge. Our main research-question was how the character, complexity, semantic richness, intransparency, knowledge-level and reality of the problem influence the applicability of knowledge in respect of different cohorts of our sample. 5827 pupils participated in our survey from grade 7 (59%) and 11 (41%). The samples were representative of the given grades. There is a significant development in the achievement between grade 7 (M=15%) and grade 11 (M=35%), but there is a notable number of students in the elder group who do not even reach the mean of grade 7. The main difficulty in solving the problems was that they did not get the problems in the way they are used to in their school, rather in context where, in some cases, they even had to define the problems themselves. The more information they were supposed to gather from the more places in the more different forms the lower was the probability of good solutions. Pupils tended to adhere to their routine processes. The most significant development was found in solving those problems which they could most frequently face in they everyday life.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 106. Number 4. 329-344. (2006)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Molnár Gyöngyvér, SZTE Neveléstudományi Intézet, MTA-SZTE Képességkutató Csoport, H–6722 Szeged, Petőfi S. sgt. 30–34.

 
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