Proceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education · Volume 1
Yew Hoong Leong, Xin Li
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
⬇ Download PDFIn solving mathematics problems of the type that are non-routine and where the solver encounters blockages to overcome, the problem solving process is likely to require flexibility that is beyond merely alternative ways of tackling routine tasks. We thus make a distinction between procedural flexibility and heuristical flexibility in the context of problem solving. By analysing a case of a student teacher solving the “nice number problem”, we found that the insights from his procedural flexibilities can potentially be reasonably translated as heuristical flexibility in a productive way. That he did not do so led to reflections that can open up new areas of research in mathematics problem solving.
procedural flexibilityheuristical flexibilityproblem solving