Exploring the interrelationship between recurrent and non-recurrent skills in the problem-solving process

ABSTRACT

Recurrent skills and non-recurrent skills are two sets of interrelated skills involved in the problem-solving process. However, how this interrelationship impact on students’ learning experience has been scarcely discussed in the literature. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating how the development of recurrent skills and non-recurrent skills affect learning. The findings revealed that this interrelationship affects students’ cognitive capacity through reducing students’ intrinsic and extraneous loads, thereby allowing them to allocate more germane load capacity to develop non-recurrent skills. Additionally, students’ prior knowledge and experience influence the development speed of recurrent skills and non-recurrent skills. Learning time also plays an essential role in the learning process. Findings of this study not only provided guidance for designing effective problem-solving instruction but also filled the research gap by demonstrating the reported differences in the development speed of recurrent skills and non-recurrent skills could attribute to the learning time.

KEYWORDS:

• Recurrent skills development
• Non-recurrent skills development
• Interrelationship
• Development speed
• Learning time

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board in related institutions.

Data availability statement

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.