At the same time, a parallel approach saw the teaching for problem solving which required the students to learn a number of mathematical skills and procedures through the use of drill and practice, the usual mathematics classroom pedagogy remained unchanged. This approach became the target which asked how much problem solving was being done when the heading on school textbook page was Pythagoras theorem and every problem was answered by the theorem. There was criticism of the p questions, being asked provide answers to shallow typical of the kind we can see in textbooks. These are not what I consider problems or problem solving situations" (Ollerton,2016,P.14)
these two approaches in opposition to current researchers who feel that especially in the early years of schooling, the mathematics curricula should challenge the students but not break their confidence,should but not lose sight of the structure of mathematics, and should develop concepts but not turn mathematics learning into a remembering exercise (Sullivan, 2001) Trick problems are not connected to the intended curriculum and are merely a bit of fun to be done after the real mathematics (Lovitt, 1999)
There were other attempts to adopt problem such as teaching about so and em solving. This focuses on learning strategies,heuristics, and the processes and behaviours of problem solving. involved giving students solved problems to study apply to hers, or to problem and practice a number of Work solving strategies such as: Trial and Guess, check and refine backwards, and man more. It assumed that
Learning about the reasoning of experts assist in fostering your own reasoning abilities; it should establish a feeling that mathematics makes sense and is not just a set of arbitrary rules and ...it should demonstrate the uniquely deductive character of mathematics (Stacey2010, P.18)
This approach was favoured by the cognitive scientists with their cognitive load theory. They claimed that problem solving placed great demands on working memory, so that teachers were better off giving students solved problems to study and to store in their long-term memory for future use. Once stored, whenever the student faced with a similar problem, they could bring the solution from long-term to working memory and then solve the problem (sweller, 2007. The difficulty of a task depended on the total cognitive load, which was determined by the interaction various aspects of the task including its complexity, unfamiliarity, and technical demand as reflected in the chains of reasoning needed for developing a solution.