Piloting Supplementary Materials Aimed at Developing Students’ Problem-Solving and Self-Regulated Learning Skills

Abstract

Developing students' transversal skills is an important education goal, and its implementation requires equipping teachers with appropriate supplementary materials and methodological support. The aim of the research was to develop supplementary materials aimed at enhancing students’ problem-solving and self-regulated learning skills, and to pilot the materials in secondary school lessons. Problem-solving and self-regulated learning skills are transversal skills, so the supplementary materials were not subject-specific and were designed to help teachers promote these students' skills in the lessons of any school subjects. The set of materials comprised 10 worksheets with both questions and prompts that could promote the development of students’ problem-solving and self-regulated learning skills. In total 139 teachers applied to pilot materials for a month, and 36 of them provided feedback by completing a questionnaire. Participants represented different schools and school subjects and were teachers of Grades 5–12; the majority of them (80,6%) had more than 21 years of work experience. Overall, participants evaluated the materials as very helpful for developing students' problem-solving and self-regulated learning skills, as the materials paid particular attention to planning, self-monitoring and self-reflection through a detailed focus on each of these processes, stimulated by questions in the materials. However, the teachers also concluded that the students lacked the in-depth metacognitive skills to self-analyze and self-regulate their performance, and teachers provided feedback and valuable suggestions for improving the supplementary materials. The study contributes to the research area and work of practitioners by demonstrating that appropriately designed supplementary materials are a valuable and useful tool to help teachers develop students' problem-solving and self-regulated learning skills.