Solving Problems in Multiple Ways, Dept.

There is a notion floating about in education land that teaching students multiple ways to solve particular mathematical problems builds flexible thinking, and reasoning skills. I have been looking for research studies that show this, but the closest I’ve found is a study by Rittle-Johnson et al (2016) conducted in algebra classes, that had students compare and discuss alternative methods. It does not address the effect of learning multiple methods for solving a problem. And it also does not definitively conclude that the comparison of methods increases flexible thinking and reasoning skills.

Flexible thinking comes up often in edu-land because it is associated with a nagging question—one that was articulated to me by my advisor when I was attending ed school: “What happens when students are placed in a totally unfamiliar situation that requires a more complex solution? Do they know how to generate a procedure? How do we teach…