Recently, my husband sent me a text message with a picture of his seven year old cousin, Austin’s homework assignment. It reminded me of one of those funny posts you would see on Facebook titled something along the lines of “Kids say the darndest things… on their homework.” He missed the last question, and you can read why:

I got quite a chuckle out of this, but then it made me think. Although Austin’s answer was very witty, I don’t think he meant it quite that way. I think Austin experienced an incomplete or incorrect representation. He misunderstood the teacher’s wording, and would probably have answered better had the teacher said “Which place helped you decide: tens or ones?”

What the teacher was actually asking him was to explain a portion of the problem space within the problem solving process. As discussed within our lesson notes, problem space represents every possible state of affairs within a problem(Cardenas, “Problem Space”). The teacher wanted Austin to identify this portion of the problem space.

Even after we tried explaining to Austin what he did wrong, he still thinks his answer was justified, because when it comes to math, he just knows everything, or so he says!

Cardenas, R. (n.d.). Retrieved May 6, 2015, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/sp15/psych256/003/content/14_lesson/09_page.html