With rising concerns about U.S. competitiveness in a global workplace, questions typically center on adequacy of training. What are the parameters of achievement, what benchmarks can be established as indicating competent and proficient student performance? Research on problem solving has shown that the specific order in which a person generates equations in a solution is indicative of his or her level of expertise. Experts apply the process of forward inferencing. Novices apply the process of backward inferencing. Forward inferencing requires a deep understanding of the problem. This understanding is activated immediately, either through recalling that type of problem from past experience, or through reasoning about the problem before generating equations. Students' problem solving protocols were analyzed to determine if they behaved like experts or novices. The data consisted of paper-and-pencil solutions and video-recordings of engineering freshmen and sophomores who were asked to think aloud as they solved typical statics problems. Data from U.S. students suggested that freshman-sophomore undergraduate students did not use forward inferencing. In contrast to the U.S. data, students at an Indian Institute of Technology clearly used forward inferencing and showed that beginning undergraduate students can achieve the deep problem solving insight characteristic of experts. The U.S. and Indian data include quantitative and qualitative evidence. The distributions of forward versus backward inferencing are reported. Curriculum and cross-cultural differences are considered, in part, in accounting for the differences between U.S. and Indian students. The value of this research to U.S. engineering curricula is that it provides clear pedagogical benchmarks for classroom instruction.
展开▼
