Students’ Mathematics Problem Solving Difficulties and Coping and Strategies: A Model Building Study

Abstract

Problems. difficulties and pressures abound everywhere. In Mathematics, much has been sard and heard of students struggling with problem solving. This study therefore p·imarily aimed to develop models that could address the problem solving diff;culties of students through their coping strategies. Specifically, it aimed to determine the students' strategies in coping with their difficulties along the four phases of problem solving namely: understanding the problem (UP), devising a plan (DP), ca:-rying out the plan (CP) and looking back (LB) according to a) sex and b) academic programs namely:

The study employed case-study-design approach. The respondents of the study involved thirteen classes with 425 college freshmen who were enrolled during the firs! seri,ester of SY 2018-2019. Two hundred ninety-seven of them composed the model development group while 128 respondents composed the validation group.

Results of the problem solving test revealed the following difficulties of the respondents: a) inability to distinguish the known from the unknown information and inability to identify the type of problem and recall basic concepts in the UP phase, b) inc.1bility to transform a problem into a mathematical equation and inability to draw tables/charts out of the information and organize information and connect to a concept in the DP phase, c) inability to completely perform the working procedure systematically and accurately and inability to start with the computational process in the CP Phase, and d) inability to complete the checking procedure and inability to start the evaluation of the correctness of the obtained solution in the LB phase.

Moreover, the study revealed that the looking back (LB) phase has the most encountered difficulty, followed by the carrying out the plan (CP) phase. There were more females who encountered the above mentioned difficulties in all phases of problem solving than males. The respondents were likewise grouped into two: STEM­related acacemic programs and the non-STEM-related academic programs. The study found out that the majority of the male respondents from the STEM-related academic programs encountered the observed difficulties in all phases of problem solving.