A Brief Review of Developments in Problem Solving

“Some form of awareness of one’s own thinking is essential for efficient problem solving” (Ford, 1981, p. 364). Ford’s comment appears to reflect one of several concerns that students of problem solving have pursued since Newell and Simon’s classic text Human Problem Solving was published in 1972. The purposes of this paper are to describe the nature and importance of “awareness” as a key component of problem solving and some implications for teaching and learning problem solving based on this notion.