An Appropriate Prompts System Based on the Polya Method for Mathematical Problem-Solving

Current mathematics education emphasizes techniques, formulas, and procedures, neglecting the importance of understanding, presentation, and reasoning. This turns students into passive listeners that are well-practiced only in using formulas that they do not understand. We therefore adopted the Polya problem-solving method to provide students with a diversified foundation for problem-solving. Furthermore, giving students immediate feedback in the form of prompts can help them to find the answers on their own them, thereby helping them learn more effectively. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the influences of a teaching activity incorporating Polya's method and an appropriate prompt mechanism on the learning effectiveness of students. Research Subjects were two classes selected from an elementary school in Taiwan; one as the experimental group were taught with the providing appropriate prompts based on the Polya strategy of mathematical problems solving, the other one as the control group were treated by the conventional instructions. The results showed that: (1) there were significant differences between the experimental group and the control group in the learning effectiveness; (2) most of the students in the experimental group were satisfied by the proposed prompts system.