Complete thesis - Murdoch University

hypothesis evaluation – testing and making corrections. Procedural skills and metacognitionplay an important part at this stage, since individuals must make decisions aboutwhat strategies to use as well as monitor progress.Morris and Rouse (1985) review the research on troubleshooting and conclude that troubleshootingperformance degrades as the system increases in complexity or time constraintsare imposed; instruction in theoretical principles is not an effective way to train good troubleshooters;proceduralisation is the most effective way of ensuring a strategy is employed;explicit guidance on applying system knowledge or problem solving strategies improves performance,and task-related knowledge is more relevant than aptitude.These findings are supported by the work of Gott et al (1993). They describe an advancedlevel of problem solving performance that is at a premium in knowledge-rich domains whereill-structured problems are plentiful. This is based on a growing body of evidence thatsuggests adaptiveness in generalising knowledge – particularly in the context of complexproblem solving tasks – is strongly influenced by the quality of knowledge representation.Adaptive expertise is characterised by principled representations of knowledge and skillsrather than representation dominated by surface features. This concept is linked to Norman(1993)’s ‘runnable’ mental model – the main causal connections of the components of asituation are specified so that running a mental model invokes an explanatory theory to use ininstantiating a given problem situation. Gott et al (1993) posit that this adaptive/generativecapability suggests the performer not only knows the procedural steps for problem solvingbut understands when to deploy them and why they work.Declaration 2 system complexity degrades some types of problem solving performance,but task-related knowledge, with guidance on applying domain and strategicknowledge, improves performanceIssues of transfer are also highlighted in the problem solving literature. Research duringthe late 1970s and into the 1990s found (through the use of isomorphs of common problems(eg, tic-tac-toe, tower of hanoi)) that skill gained on solving one form of the same problemdid not always transfer. Little transfer from harder to easier isomorph was demonstrated,while changes in the cover story (such as a change from active to passive voice) was enough toalter the problem solving time. In addition, the problem representations assimilated from theinstructions caused changes in problem difficulty (and hence ease of solution). The discussionby Reed (1993) address issues of transfer.Research even in the seemingly well-structured domain of mathematics shows that the relationshipsbetween task performance and conceptual understanding are neither direct nor114