Indicators of gifted students' strategic flexibility in non-routine problem solving

Abstract

When students encounter challenging problems, difficulty or errors in the problem solving process, they must have the ability to adapt or change their problem solving methods; in other words, they must possess strategic flexibility. The aim of this study was to determine the strategic flexibility indicators displayed by gifted children in solving non-routine problems. A case study method was used. The study group consisted of 20 eighth, ninth, and tenth grade students attending the Science and Art Centre in Bursa, Turkey. A test consisting of seven non-routine problems was used. The problems in this test were asked to each student one by one by conducting individual interviews. The content analysis results revealed three themes. Under the first theme, strategy adaptivity, there were two indicators: Strategy knowledge and selection of the appropriate strategy. Under the second theme, intra-task strategic flexibility, four indicators were defined: changing the strategy when it did not work, solving the problem again with a different strategy, the ability to use several strategies simultaneously for solving a problem, checking the correctness of the solution with a different strategy. The last theme, inter-task strategic flexibility, consisted of only one indicator named changing strategies when encountering different problems.