Master of Arts (Instructional Design & Technology)

One of the major aims of the mathematics curriculum is to enable pupils to develop their ability in problem solving. This study is premised on situated cognition that advocates acquisition of knowledge in an authentic context as well as on constructivist learning where learning occurs through social interaction, collaboration and dialogue among learners to negotiate meaning. The study was conducted with 45 primary six pupils in a neighbourhood school. The pupils accessed a web-stream video "Planning a Class Outing" and they were assigned the task of planning the budget for the outing. One of the tasks involved coming-up with a transportation proposal. The video was produced based on Anchored Instruction principles (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990). The pupils used Knowledge Forum, a computer-supported collaborative learning program, for problem solving. One group of pupils were provided with scaffold (cognitive prompts) to assist them in the problem solving but the other group of pupils conducted the discussion without scaffolding.

The dependent measures were the pupils' problem solving performance and their attitudes towards Mathematics. The results show that the pupils' attitude towards mathematics was generally favourable and pupils who solved the problem in scaffolded communication environment tend to perform better than those using un-scaffolded environment.