Unlocking Problem Solving Difficulties of Teacher Education Students

Abstract

Problem-solving is often associated with word problems that do not focus only the content knowledge but also on the ability of students to analyze the problem and apply appropriate strategy to arrive at the correct answer. This research used descriptive design to analyze the problem-solving abilities of the Bachelor of Elementary Education III students of the Isabela State University- Cauayan Campus for the SY 2011- 2012. The research used a teacher-made test. Frequency and percentage were employed to analyze data regarding sources of the difficulty of the students. Results showed that some students had a difficulty in representing the problem. A student who successfully represented the problem managed to produce the correct equation and eventually solve the problem correctly. The difficulty of the students lies in representing the unknown quantities. A proportion of those who did not make any attempts to represent the problem and those who did not correctly represent the problem can also produce correct equation by using the word matching approach. However, this approach is not applicable when the problem is using a less inconsistent problem that can be seen in the number problem. Some students with difficulty in solving equations were very minimal. Keywords-Mathematics, difficulty, problem-solving test, Isabela, Philippines