Hur löser lärare problemet med problemlösning? - En intervjustudie av lärares undervisning om och med problemlösning i matematikämnet på gymnasiet

Abstract

The following study consists of interviews with Swedish mathematics teachers regarding their teaching practice when working with problem solving in upper secondary school. One of the goals for the Swedish curriculum in upper secondary school is for students to develop their ability for problem solving, in mathematics as well as in other areas. Research shows that problem solving has positive effects on mathematical learning, but the actual teaching of the subject appears to be a hard task. To study how teachers deal with this task, eight certified mathematics teachers were interviewed about how they plan and implement their teaching of problem solving, what goals they have surrounding this content, what difficulties they experience and how they deal with them. The transcribed interviews were analysed based on grounded theory starting with open coding followed by thematizing based on the interview questions. The differences in the teachers’ interpretations of the concept of problem solving seemed to have less effect on their teaching practice than the differences in their perception of the purpose of problem solving. One difficulty experienced by most teachers, and which affected the content concerning problem solving, was lack of time. Teachers who did not consider the problem solving ability to be applicable in subjects other than mathematics, still believed the aim of their teaching to be fulfilled even with less time dedicated to problem solving. The teachers who did consider this ability to be useful in other areas as well, either dedicated more teaching time to, or wished they could dedicate more time to, problem solving and viewed the lack of time as an obstacle. Many other difficulties were mentioned, such as balancing differences in previous knowledge, lack of motivation among the students, and students not daring to take chances when choosing and testing different methods. As a group the informants had suggestions for ways of overcoming most of these proble