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Updated: Jun 24, 2025

Problem-Solving Before Instruction PS-I: A Protocol for Assessment and Intervention in Students with Different Abilities
Published on: September 11, 2021
Problem solving is embedded in context… so how do we measure it?
Katherine T Rhodes1, Lindsey E Richland2, Lucia Alcalá3
1Language Variation and Academic Success (LVAS) Lab, School of Education, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Abstract:
Problem solving encompasses the broad domain of human, goal-directed behaviors. Though we may attempt to measure problem solving using tightly controlled and decontextualized tasks, it is inextricably embedded in both reasoners' experiences and their contexts. Without situating problem solvers, problem contexts, and our own experiential partialities as researchers, we risk intertwining the research of information relevance with our own confirmatory biases about people, environments, and ourselves. We review each of these ecological facets of information relevance in problem solving, and we suggest a framework to guide its measurement. We ground this framework with concrete examples of ecologically valid, culturally relevant measurement of problem solving.
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