TITLE:
Developing an Expert and Reflexive Approach to Problem-Solving: The Place of Emotional Knowledge and Skills
AUTHORS:
Vanessa Hanin, Catherine Van Nieuwenhoven
KEYWORDS:
Problem-Solving Competence, Elementary School Students, Emotion Knowledge and Skills, Heuristic Strategy, Intervention
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.9 No.2,
February
28,
2018
ABSTRACT: Nowadays it is widely accepted that mathematics and, especially, problemsolving tasks, are particularly concerned by the issue of emotions. Yet, educational interventions designed to improve students’ problem-solving competence and performance still mainly focus on cognitive and metacognitive knowledge and skills. The main purpose of this study was to design and assess the benefit of a training program that promotes the development of not only cognitive but also emotional knowledge and skills. This benefit was assessed using four variables, namely, problem-solving performance, problem-solving competence, academic emotions and emotion regulation strategies. 428 fifth and sixth graders took part in the study, split into four conditions: 1) a “cognition” condition which received an intervention on an eight-step problemsolving process; 2) an “emotion” condition in which emotional knowledge and skills were developed through various activities; 3) an “emotion and cognition” condition overlapping the two previous ones, and 4) a “control” condition. The findings showed that the “emotion and cognition” condition and the “cognition” condition had equivalent cognitive efficiency. However, only the former reduced negative emotions, aroused the emergence of positive ones, promoted the use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies and discouraged the use of maladaptive ones. The practical implications for educational practices and possible avenues for further research are discussed.