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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

prior experience, encouraging students, intuition

College

Physical and Mathematical Sciences

Department

Mathematics

Abstract

Throughout my research, the students were rarely given a verbal introduction to the tasks they faced. Instead, they had to rely on their intuition, pre-conceptions, and any previous knowledge to find solutions to the tasks at hand. They were given time and resources to explore their already existing understanding. This balance of time to think and distance from the teacher’s guidance is key, I think, to encouraging students to use their intuition and past experience to solve problems. According to Duckworth (Bransford, 2000), “Accomplished teachers ‘give learners reason’ by respecting and understanding learners’ prior experiences and understandings, assuming that these can serve as a foundation on which to build bridges to new understandings.” When teachers intrigue students with interesting problems to consider, students will naturally respond by relying on their intuition and previous knowledge. If teachers simply pump their students with new information, the new information may quickly be lost. New information will be better retained, I think, if it can be associated with other, already familiar information.

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