DEVELOPING PROBLEM- SOLVING SKILLS

Practical suggestions for possible remediation strategies for problem-solving skills Many educators intuitively feel that "problem solving is prob-ably the single most important basic skill " (Cowan and Clary 1978). Yet, little has been written to assist teachers or parents in their attempts to help those who are poor problem solvers. Why are some children poor problem solvers? Where do their difficulties occur in the problem-solving process? How can these difficulties be overcome? Our purpose is to address these issues by first identifying obstructions to problem solving, then providing suggestions for skills that need to be "facilitated " by the teacher and "discovered " by the student. Why Poor Problem Solvers? Most research about problem solving suggests that the following five steps are practically a universally endorsed pro-cess: (1) recognition of the problem, (2) analysis of contributing factors, (3) consideration of possible solutions, (4) choice of op-timal solutions, and (5) evaluation of feedback to determine results (Maker 1981). We will contend that the universal en-dorsement of these steps indicate a natural problem-solving log ic-a logic that virtually everyone goes through when effec-tively solving most any problem. Not only is problem solving