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Technology, Knowledge and Learning

, Volume 19, Issue 1–2, pp 127–146 | Cite as

The Role of Strategy Knowledge for the Application of Strategies in Complex Problem Solving Tasks

  • Sascha Wüstenberg
  • Matthias Stadler
  • Jarkko Hautamäki
  • Samuel Greiff
Article
First Online:

Abstract

Education in the twenty-first century must prepare students to meet the challenges of a dynamic and interconnected world. However, assessment of students’ skills tends to focus primarily on static tasks. Therefore, it is not known whether knowledge about successful strategies displayed on static tasks can be transferred to interactive and dynamic environments. This study investigated whether students’ knowledge of a certain strategy (i.e., vary-one-thing-at-a-time, VOTAT) that was assessed in a paper-and-pencil-based scientific reasoning task as well as their fluid intelligence and learning orientation would be sufficient to explain variance in the application of the VOTAT strategy in solving an interactive complex problem solving (CPS) task (i.e., CPS strategy). Furthermore, we analyzed whether CPS strategy mediated the relation between the predictors (i.e., scientific reasoning, learning orientation, fluid intelligence) and CPS performance. The sample consisted of N = 3,191 Finnish students attending the 6th and 9th grades. Results revealed that all predictors were significantly related to CPS strategy, but a substantial amount of variance in CPS strategy remained unexplained (ΔR2 = .583). Furthermore, CPS strategy mediated the relation between the predictors and CPS performance. Three implications are discussed: Different demands on the problem solver, knowledge transfer from static versus interactive tasks, or metastrategic knowledge may explain the unexplained variance in CPS strategy. Additionally, the results of our mediation analyses emphasize the importance of measuring strategies via logfiles to gain a deeper understanding of determinants of students’ CPS performance. Finally, fostering motivational factors such as students’ learning orientation yields small improvements in CPS performance.

Keywords

Complex problem solving Scientific reasoning Strategy Educational measurement Computer-based assessment Metacognition 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by a grant from the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (ATTRACT “ASKI21”), the European Union (290683; LLLight’in’Europe), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (LSA004). We are grateful to the TBA group at DIPF (http://tba.dipf.de) for providing the authoring tool CBA Item Builder and technical support.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Sascha Wüstenberg
    • 1
  • Matthias Stadler
    • 1
  • Jarkko Hautamäki
    • 2
  • Samuel Greiff
    • 1
  1. 1.University of LuxembourgLuxembourgLuxembourg
  2. 2.University of HelsinkiHelsinkiFinland

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