(1555) PRE-SERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS' COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS

摘要

Collaborative problem solving is an important skill at almost any workplace, thus developing this skillshould be an important goal of school education. This skill can be developed started in primary school,as it is important that primary school teachers own this skill and they know the methodology to developit. The aim of this paper is to study pre-service primary school teachers' attitude towards team-work,their behavior during group problem solving, and their collaborative problem solving skill. Studentswere asked to solve two challenging mathematical problems individually, and then they were groupedby 3 or 4 and asked to solve the same problems in the group. After they have solved the problems ingroups, they have filled in individually a questionnaire regarding their behavior during team-work andtheir feelings regarding solving problems in group. The results show, that pre-service primary schoolteachers have a positive attitude towards team-work, almost three quarters of the students like moreto work in groups than individually. They like team-work because they understand better the solution,they like to communicate with their team-members, and they get help in the group in case they can'tsolve a problem. They also have adequate behaviour during team-work, listening each others ideas,helping each other, sharing their ideas with the group. As regarding problem solving results obtainedindividually vs. in group, during this research the score of the most groups is equal with the maximumscore obtained individually by the team-members.