The Problem of Problem-Solving Courts

The creation of a specialized, “problem-solving” court is a ubiquitous response to the issues that plague our criminal legal system. The courts promise to address the factors believed to lead to repeated interactions with the system, such as addiction or mental illness, thereby reducing recidivism and saving money. And they do so effectively — at least according to their many proponents, who celebrate them as an example of a successful “evidence-based,” data-driven reform. But the actual data on their efficacy is underwhelming, inconclusive, or altogether lacking. So why do they persist? This Article seeks to answer that question by scrutinizing the role of judges in creating and sustaining the problem-solving court movement. It contends problem-solving courts do effectively address a problem — it is just not the one we think. It argues that these courts revive a sense of purpose and authority for judges in an era marked by diminishing judicial power. Moreover, it demonstrates that the courts have developed and proliferated relatively free from objective oversight. Together, these new insights help explain why the problem-solving court model endures. They also reveal a new problem with the model itself — its entrenchment creates resistance to alternatives that might truly reform or transform the system

THE EFFECT OF THE ONLINE-BASED M-APOS MODEL ON MATHEMATICS PROBLEM-SOLVING ABILITY REVIEWED FROM STUDENT'S SELF-ESTEEM

Mathematics is a difficult subject for most students, where students tend not to be able to solve problems on questions in the form of problem-solving such as description questions. Efforts can be made to increase student learning outcomes by applying the M-APOS learning model. This study investigates whether or not there is a significant effect of the M-APOS learning model on mathematical problem-solving abilities in terms of the self-esteem of East Jakarta Vocational School students Region II, 2021-2022 academic year. This study is an experimental study that compares the value of the experimental class using the M-APOS model with the value of the control class using the conventional model. The values are analyzed using the t-test, where the results of the t-test indicate that count = 15.736 and df= 82. Besides it was found that e = 1.989. The test criteria are that the 0 is rejected if count > e and it was found that 15.736 > 0.165. Based on the test results, the 0 is rejected. This means that there are differences in the mathematical problem-solving abilities of students who receive the M-APOS learning model and those who receive conventional learning models

Metaphor-based negotiation and its application in AGV movement planning

The theme of this thesis is "metaphor-based negotiation". By metaphor-based negotiation I mean a category of approaches for problem-solving in Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) that mimic some aspects of human negotiation behaviour. The research in this dissertation is divided into two closely related parts. Cooperative interaction among agents in a multiagent system (MAS) is discussed in general, and the discussion leads to a formal definition of metaphor-based negotiation. Then, as a specific application, a "spring-based" computational model for metaphor-based negotiation is developed as an approach to solving movement planning, specifically the AGV scheduling problem (AGVSP) — determing the timings of AGVs' activities, of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in a factory.By formally addressing the multi-agent cooperative interaction problem and assuming that agents in a MAS are rational, benevolent and fully informed, an initial strategy set of cooperative interaction can be reduced to a strategy set by eliminating strategies that are irrational in a group sense. However, it is proved in this dissertation that, in the remaining strategy set, no unique strategy can be found that is acceptable to all agents according their individual preferences. More specifically, in this smaller strategy set, if one agent moves from one strategy to another in an attempt to better its individual goal achievement, then there is at least one agent whose goal achievement will be negatively affected by such a move. So, the cooperative interaction problem can only be partially solved if no further knowledge is given to those agents. The idea of a common sense principle is introduced in this dissertation to overcome the deficiencies of the assumptions of rationality, benevolence and full-informedness.In reality, the assumption of full-informedness of agents may not be practical. Communication is needed for agents to (1) exchange their local problem solving information, and (2) exchange proposals for global problem solving, when their views are in conflict. Based on the discussion of cooperative interaction, a formal definition of metaphorbased negotiation is proposed to formally indicate what is a proposal and what is the condition for accepting a proposal from another agent. In this definition, the common sense principle is one of the most important features, not found in definitions of negotiation available so far in the literature, which guides agents to find an agreement when negotiation is running into difficulties.The AGVSP involves timing activities for each AGV in a AGV-based factory. The AGVSP is naturally distributed: the whole problem can be easily divided into several subproblems each of which involves timing of activities of one AGV. Therefore, it is intuitively straightforward for us to seek DAI approaches to solving the AGVSP. In spired by Kwa's Iterative Negotiation Model [Kwa 88b] [Kwa 88a] for the AGVSP, we developed a spring-based (metaphor-based) negotiation model for the AGVSP to overcome some vital problems in Kwa's model. The idea of the spring-based negotiation model is described below:The AGVSP can be regarded as a Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DCSP) and solved in a MAS. Each agent in the MAS is designed to solve a subproblem — a local scheduling problem which is a small Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). Conflicts exist when intra-agent constraints or inter-agent constraints are violated. These constraints can be classified into hard constraints— those that can not be relaxed at the agent level unless the system designer permits (e.g., by providing an arbitrator), and soft constraints — those that can be relaxed at the agent level when necessary. When agents are in conflict, i.e, when some inter-agent constraints are violated (or say, when one agent's timings of its activities overlap those of some other agents), these agents involved will resolve the conflicts through a (metaphor-based) negotiation procedure in which conflicts will be gradually resolved by each agent's relaxation of its intra-agent constraints, i.e, by yielding some amount of its initially allocated resources to other agents or by shifting its initially allocated resources. The negotiation can be viewed as a process of exchanging proposals (of cooperative strategies) between conflicting agents, where a cooperative strategy is a possible resolution to a conflict according to the viewpoint of the proposing agent. However, since agents are designed to be rational, each agent that is involved in the conflicts will try hard to relax its intra-agent constraints as little as possible. Further, it is reasonably acceptable that the more an intra-agent constraint has been relaxed the less the respective agent is willing to relax it further. This feature can be modeled by a spring — the more it has been compressed the harder it is to compress it further. Based on this inspiration, a spring-based computational model of metaphor-based negotiation is proposed: each agent's local schedule is represented by a local spring network in which each spring element represents a soft intra-agent constraint. Relaxation of an intra-agent constraint is likened to a spring being compressed by external forces from other agents. As a consequence, the compressed spring will also show a reacting force upon those compressing agents. An agreement will be reached when those forces and reacting forces are balanced. This is the common sense principle in the spring-based negotiation. The model solves some key issues, e.g., how to select negotiation techniques and skills during the process of negotiation, that have not been solved by Kwa's iterative negotiation model. Some experimental evidence of the value of this model is presented

The effects of teaching the reading of word problems on mathematical achievement of seventh grade middle school students in Title I Mathematics, 1983

The problem of this study was to investigate whether mathematical achievement can be influenced by instruction in the reading skills necessary to solving word problems. The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a statistically significant difference in achievement of seventh grade Title I students who receive instruction in the reading of word problems compared to those who do not receive such instruction. This study was conducted during the 1981-1982 school year at Samuel Inman Middle School. The subjects were thirty seventh grade boys and girls assigned to two Title I mathematic classes, whose percentile rank obtained from the California Achievement Test was 49 and below. These students were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. Teachers of both the experimental and control groups followed procedures suggested in Houghton Mifflin's Mathematics as their method of instruction during the six weeks study. These methods include posing problems, posing questions, making sketches, presenting problems representa-tive of real-life situations, demonstrations and drill. Each lesson covered by both groups was introduced by an instructional model which illustrated the objectives. Follow-up practice material which aided students in learning the lesson objectives was divided into three sections, A, B, and C. Section A reinforced the instructional model, and provided a step-by-step introduction to skill development. Section B provided practice for the lesson objectives, and section C extended the objectives, including word problems in which computational skills were applied. Prior to each verbal problem-solving experience, the experimental group was given a three-leveled reading comprehension guide to aid them in extracting from the word problem what they were to do and what information they were to compute, while the control group was simply given extra practice in solving word problems from work sheets designed to supplement those problems given in the textbook. The time allotted for this extra practice equaled that allotted for the reading strategy given the experimental group. A pre and posttest was given to both groups to determine gain in problem solving skills. The posttest data revealed that there was not a significant difference between the mathematical achievement of the experimental group and the control group as indicated by the 't' of .721 at .05 level of confidence and twenty-eight degrees of freedom. This study concluded that instruction in the reading skills necessary to solving word problems did not increase the mathematical achievement of Title I mathematics students significantly more than the teaching of skills supported by practice. The negative results in this study have some implica-tions for teachers: 1. Prolonged use of a single strategy such as the comprehension guide may bore or frustrate some students. 2. There appears to be a need for greater attention to the degree of understanding that the student has of the conceptual structure of mathematics as a prerequisite to his/her exposure to a particular strategy if he/she is expected to use the strategy effectively. 3. Students' negative perceptions of Title I programs may work against special efforts to improve their achievement. On the basis of the conclusions and implications, the following recommendations are made: 1. That further study be conducted to verify or disprove the present findings concerning the use of a reading comprehension guide to improve mathematical achievement. 2. That a more extensive longitudinal study be made on the use of a reading comprehension guide in the mathematics classroom and its effect on achievement scores. 3. Students should be exposed to this strategy in a regular mathematics classroom. 4. Students should be thoroughly aware of the purpose for instruction in the reading skills necessary to solving word problems upon initiation of instruc-tion

HOW COMMUNICATION AND CONFIRMATORY STRATEGIES AFFECT THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

Scientific reasoning has become a topic of recent psychological research. Studies have focused on Karl Popper\u27s idea that scientists should try to falsify, or disconfirm, their hypotheses instead of verifying them. Results indicate that both scientists and college students prefer to use confirmatory logic on simple tasks that model scientific reasoning. The only attempt to instruct subjects to use disconfirmatory reasoning failed (Mynatt, Doherty & Tweney, 1977) though subjects that falsified on their own initiative were more successful than subjects who tried to confirm. All the studies of scientific reasoning have focused on individuals. But major advances in science are often made by groups, e.g., the research teams that discovered the structure of DNA and developed the atomic bomb. Experimental studies of group problem-solving have compared the performance of interacting groups with that of concocted groups composed of an equal number of individuals working separately. When there is a single, right answer to a problem, interacting groups perform about as well as the best member of each equally large concocted group, but better than the average person working alone. This thesis synthesizes the literatures on scientific reasoning and group problem-solving by combining their two major variables in a single study. Communication was manipulated by running subjects in groups of four and either telling them to interact or to work separately. Strategy was manipulated by instructing subjects to follow either disconfirmatory or confirmatory approaches to the task, which was based on New Eleusis, a card-game designed to model the search for truth. Each group had to solve the same four increasingly difficult Eleusis problems. The overall design was a 2 (interacting vs. noninteracting) x 2 (disconfirmatory vs. confirmatory) x 4 (the Eleusis problems) split plot. Analyses-of-variance were conducted on the number of correct solutions and the time-to-solution achieved by groups in each condition. Even though a manipulation-check revealed that disconfirmatory groups did try to follow their suggested strategy, there were no significant differences in the performances of confirmatory and disconfirmatory groups. This result replicates Mynatt et al.\u27s (1977) earlier research. Interacting groups performed no better than the best member of each non-interacting group, where the best is defined as the person who solved each rule in the least time. Interacting groups also took significantly more time. But interacting groups did solve a significantly higher percentage of problems (80%) than all non-interacting individuals combined (33%). These results replicate earlier research on group problem-solving (Steiner, 1972). A follow-up study, the same task and interacting groups, revealed that disconfirmatory instructions produce superior performance when subjects have maximum freedom to design their own experiments. When the range of possible experiments is limited, confirmatory groups may serendipitously disconfirm their hypotheses. A discussion of the implications of these results for science and suggestions for future research were included in the thesis

Processes of problem-solving and instructional change in physics

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of PhysicsEleanor C. SayreThis research presents an investigation of how students solve physics problems and how physics instructors approach changes in their teaching. In particular, the first part of this dissertation focuses on three major projects looking at students' processes of problem-solving in upper-division physics courses. The second part focuses on the processes of instructional change. In the first project described in part I, I discuss the clusters of resources that emerge when upper-division students write about electromagnetic fields in linear materials. I use a resource theory perspective to describe the ways students link pieces of information (or resources) to form more complex ideas, improve their understanding, and solve physics problems. The evidence shows that students benefit from activating resources related to the internal structure of the atom when thinking about electric fields to complete their mental model. Physics as a discipline embeds conceptual meaning about the physical world in mathematical formalism. In the second project, I use Sherin's symbolic forms theory to present an analysis of the different physical meanings associated with the equal signs across a physics context. Sherin's symbolic forms framework links mathematical equations to intuitive conceptual ideas. I delineate types of equal signs as used in five undergraduate level physics textbooks and develop a categorization scheme. Six distinct meanings are identified: causality, balancing, definitional, assignment, hybrid, and calculation. After considering five physics textbooks, I then analyze students' solutions in their written homework in an upper-division electrostatics course and compare them to textbook solutions. In doing so, I am able to look for patterns and compare the ways students use the equal signs to the textbook solution manual. In the last section of Part I, I examine students' epistemological framing when solving physics problems as a group. I analyze videos of students solving electrodynamics problems. I consider two epistemic frames which are common in students' discussions during problem solving in group: sense-making and answer-making. I first characterize the markers of each frame, focusing on analyzing students' group frame. Then, I present a pair of examples that show how often students transition between these frames. I notice moments that students change their attitude towards the problem to move forward in their activities. While there are many ways to view how students practice physics, the results of this project provide deeper insight into students' problem-solving processes in an upper-division course. In Part II, I use phenomenography as a methodology to explain how physics instructors approach making changes in their teaching and the different kinds of support that they would like to have. The purpose of phenomenography is to describe the qualitative variation in people's experiences. For example, what are the ways in which physics instructors think and talk about their teaching practices? Our phenomenography study explored six different major categories: how instructors approach their teaching, their motivation to make changes, resources that they have used, how they have implemented those resources, challenges they experience during a semester, and their attitudes towards implementing new changes. We ultimately aim to use our findings to redesign the PhysPort website

Relationship of pauses to problem solving events in mechanical design protocols

This thesis compares two methods for studying the problem-solving processes of mechanical design engineers. The first method, verbal protocol analysis, was applied by L. Stauffer to construct a problem-solving model of mechanical design. The second method, timing analysis, measures the time intervals separating drawing or speaking actions during the design process. Timing analyisis was applied by the author to the verbal/video design data collected by Stauffer. This thesis demonstrates that the two methods are statistically related, and hence, that employing two different study techniques enhances the reliability of both methods. The two methods have complementary strengths: protocol analysis reveals the content of the design process, while timing analysis is much more complete. Hence, a combination of protocol and timing analysis provides a stronger measure of the design process than either method alone

Alternative Modes for Teaching Mathematical Problem Solving: An Overview

Various modes are proffered as alternatives for teaching mathematical problem solving. Each mode is described briefly, along with general purposes, advantages and disadvantages. Combinations of modes are suggested; general issues identified; recommendations offered; and feedback from teachers summarized

Understanding “influence”: An exploratory study of academics’ process of knowledge construction through iterative and interactive information seeking

The motivation for this study is to better understand the searching and sensemaking processes undertaken to solve exploratory tasks for which people lack pre-existing frames. To investigate people’s strategies for that type of task, we focused on “influence” tasks because, although they appear to be unfamiliar, they arise in much academic discourse, at least tacitly. This qualitative study reports the process undertaken by academics of different levels of seniority to complete exploratory search tasks that involved identifying influential members of their academic community and “rising stars, ” and to identify similar roles in an unfamiliar academic community. 11 think-aloud sessions followed by semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the role of specific and general domain expertise in the process of information seeking and knowledge construction. Academics defined and completed the task through an iterative and interactive process of seeking and sensemaking, during which they constructed an understanding of their communities and determined qualities of “being influential”. Elements of the Data/Frame Theory of Sensemaking (Klein et al., 2007) were used as sensitising theoretical constructs. The study shows that both external and internal knowledge resources are essential to define a starting point or frame, make and support decisions, and experience satisfaction. Ill-defined or non-existent initial frames may cause unsubstantial or arbitrary decisions, and feelings of uncertainty and lack of confidence