An Information ProCessing Study

The investigation reported is prigaIily a description of how college students solve or,fail to solve algebra equations. Protocols were collected from two groups of college studerts; one group was expected to be good solvers,.the other group oontained many poor solvers. The investig/ktors souglit tc identify and classify the difficulties students had, and they tr;_ed to guess the mechanism which produced those difficul+ies. They compared the wcrk cf successful'and unsuccessful solvers, looking for ideas that might help make more solvers be successful, lnd they tried tc identify what must.be learned by the student of equation solving. The discussion of findings includes: identification of three types of errors, and s ctions devoted to kinds of knlwledge in algebra, meaning in a gebra, errors and the osychology of skill, and characteristics of d solvers. (MK) ***********3011****41414141*###*3011**##*****************44********20#*#******** * Peprodtions supplied by ErPS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. *,e0 r tJS CAPANIMENT N ( Acrts fOUCATION itaLFAR