Aspectos metacognitivos durante la resolución de problemas en aulas de primaria

Résumé

The teacher-pupil interaction when they solve word problems in the classroom is a very interesting aspect due to the relevancy of this task in the development of Mathematical Competence. In this sense, detailed studies have been conducted to analyze the cognitive processes triggered in this interaction (e.g, reasoning). This work analyzes metacognitive process generated in teacher-students interaction in joint solving word problems with different difficulty level. For that, eight teachers from sixth-grade Spanish primary education were audio-taped solving with their pupils two standard problems (easy level) taken from textbooks and two rewritten problems (difficult level) with textual aids. Audio recordings were transcribed, grouped in exchange cycles and analyzed focusing on the public content, taking into account just metacognitive processes. Then, these public contents were categorized in: reflection and regulation. The results show that firstly, rewritten problems give more space of discourse to metacognitive aspects (64vs.26cycles). Secondly, standard problems promoted more reflection (46.15%vs.40.63%) while rewritten problems more regulation (59.37%vs.53.85%); thirdly, both problems promoted in a greater way regulation processes (rewritten: 59.37%; standard: 53.85%). These results suggest that rewritten problems would need more cycles to reflect and regulate the task because they are less familiar for teachers. However, standard problems would need less cycles because they are standard on textbooks. More specifically, solving rewritten problems would require more planning and evaluation, while during standard problems solving would establish task overview because they are more familiar for teachers. In addition, teachers would be worried about solving the task and not to teach how to solve it because regulation processes versus reflections and overviews about the process is higher in both cases. Finally, a detailed analyse of these results could have educational implications.