Chair: CASTEEL, CAROLYN
DAI-A 59/05, p. 1530, Nov 1998

Problem solving ability is essential for everyday living whether in an academic, business, home, or occupational setting. Problem solving usually occurs when a person applies existing strategies to a new situation, when existing strategies are changed to reach a different goal, or when entirely new strategies are adopted because the old ones are no longer relevant nor effective. Becoming a better problem solver can be aided by developing individual self-regulation skills, i.e., reflecting on strategies used to solve problems and their effects on that problem's resolution. Teachers are frequently charged to teach 'problem solving' to their students. Teaching, itself could be viewed as problem solving. Additionally, students and teachers can both be influenced by how efficacious the teacher feels while presenting instruction. This research considers whether self-regulation, the active participation in one's own learning processes, and a correlate of self-efficacy (Zimmerman, 1989), influences problem-solving strategies as well as the pre-service teachers' personal feelings that they can help students learn. It investigates changes in the personal teaching efficacy of undergraduate college students who participated in a hands-on course designed to increase their use of self-regulation skills while problem solving. The study measures changes in personal teaching efficacy and reports on the types and number of strategies used and problems solved by these students. The study took place over a three day period during the Spring and Summer quarters at the University of South Alabama. Seventy-two undergraduates from the College of Education's Early Childhood and Elementary Education (all preservice teachers) program took part in either the experimental or the control group. The predicated changes to teaching efficacy, personal teaching efficacy and problem solving for the experimental group were not substantiated by the data collected. However, qualitative responses by a subgroup of experimental subjects who were personally interviewed did support the general supposition that becoming aware of one's own thinking processes affected one's ability to solve problems and would have an effect on the thinking processes of their future students