CONCEPT SELECTION STRATEGIES OF

Some groups of preliminary year indigenous students at the University of Papua and New Guinea were Ss for an investigation of concept selection strategies among students from a non-Western culture. Some of the methods of Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin ( 1 ) were replicated. It was found that in forming conjunctive categor ies the students were consistent in maintaining a definite strategy, that more students adopted a scanning strat egy, and that focusers were the most successful. Mixed strategists attained no success. The abstraction of disjunctive concepts provided more difficulties, as it did with their Western counterparts. The Ss, especially focusers, did not maintain their strategies. Focusers and scanners on the conjunctive problems did not inter change roles on the disjunctive problems, but some of each adopted mixed strategies with the latter problems. Mixed strategists and focusers were more successful than scanners, though focusers either solved all or no prob lems. The Ss generally found the use of negative examples difficult. The investigation is the first part of a series of studies. THE RESULTS described in this paper are the initial ones from the first part of a longitudinal study. It is felt that the results so far obtained are of sufficient interest to warrant discussion now. The objectives of these experiments are to investigate the concept selection strategies of indigenous math ematics students at the University of Papua and New Guinea, to describe these strategies mathematical ly, to link this mathematical formulation with a cat egory model of abstraction, and to contrast the re sults of Australian students with Papuan and New Gui?ean students. The experiments were also car ried out to provide background information fora mathematics project.