Correlation Study On Teachers' Support In Students' Academic Help-seeking And Students' Ability In Solving Mathematics Problems

It is widely acknowledged since the 1980s that academic help-seeking is an effective learning strategy for students to gain progress in their studies, which correspondingly needs the support from teachers. But to what extent will the teachers' support strategies improve students' ability in solving mathematics problems? This is the problem the author intends to solve in this study.In this thesis, the author takes the average students in the class, referred to as target group in this study, as subjects, who work hard and need support from teachers most but are very often ignored by the teachers. Problems dicussed in the thesis are as follows:1. Types of difficulty presented by the target group in studies1) Weak awareness of self-regulated learning and lack of learning strategies based on self-regulated learning.2) Understand the problem but cannot solve it correctly or can solve it but not sufficiently in coping with conventional problems.3) Unable to work out difficult problems though equipped with enough problem-solving skills.4) Equipped with innovative awareness and creative thinking but poor in the individual problem-solving ability.5) Difficulty in transforming from receptive learning to scientific inquiry.2. Classification of target group in terms of the means and characteristics of their academic help-seeking in studies.1) Those who need instrumental help-seeking. (the first group of subjects investigated)2) Those who need executive help-seeking, in higher degree of accepting the teachers' support. (the second group of subjects investigated)3) Those who need executive help-seeking, in lower degree of accepting the teachers' support. (the third group of subjects investigated)3. The main effort of teachers'support is to help the subjects investigated in the study transform from executive help-seeking to instrumental help-seeking. The specific support strategies designed for different types of difficulty are as follows:1) To support the instrumental help-seeking and cultivate the awareness as well as the learning strategies based on self-regulated learning.2) To delve a little deeper into the conventional problems and choose a problem-solving strategy initiatively so as to improve the ability in solving the conventional problems.3) To improve the ability in solving difficult problems by transforming the way of thinking.4) To bring innovation into the basic konwledge structure so as to develop advanced response mechanism in solving conventional problems.5) To successfully experience the new notion of learning and train to form the good habit of thinking. The thesis ends with the following conclusions:1. Teachers' support strategies in transforming the subjects' academic help-seeking from executive help-seeking to instrumental help-seeking can bring about the improvement of ability in solving mathematics problems accordingly.2. Discussions are made on what means to use to support different individuals in the target group as well as the different effects produced in the study. Support strategies to the first group of subjects investigated involves those helping students to cultivate the awareness of self-help and providing students with learning strategies of self-help, which prove to have greatly improved the students' ability in self-regulated learning. To the second group of subjects investigated, teachers' support strategies include those helping the individuals to fully understand the importance of conscious regulation of the problem-solving strategies. With the support, individuals show better normative and rationality in response to both the conventional and the difficult problems. As for the third group of subjects investigated, teachers help to transform the subjects' notion of learning and improve their thinking habits. Consequently, individuals show better response mechanism in solving conventioal problems as well as better ability in sorting out knowledge structure, and they have cultivated self-regulated learning which leadsto their regular self-training in solving conventional problems.In this study, the author employs the qualitative method of research, providing classified support strategies for the students who are seeking help from their teachers in the phase when teaching notions are developing rapidly. And the focus is that in this study the author shows the innovation in trying to improve the students' problem-solving ability by training their self-regulation on problem-solving strategies.