A First-Person Perspective on Problem Solving in a History of Mathematics Course

摘要

Although problem solving is one of the most studied areas of mathematics education, researchers have not systematically studied the experiences of problem solvers. This article provides a first-person perspective on problem solving in an undergraduate History of Mathematics course. The authors officially enrolled in a course to document problem-solving experiences. Through this self-study, this article highlights social and material resources for problem solving. Based on personal experiences, the authors generalize 4 primary factors that affected perceptions of problem difficulty in the course: categorization, interpretation, resource relevance, and complexity. The personal perceptions of problem difficulty were also influenced by the interrelatedness of these 4 factors over time, which is called stabilization. The detailed analyses of resources for problem solving and the descriptive theory of problem difficulty from the authors' perspectives as problem solvers complement cognitive and situative analyses of problem solving.