ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1614829
The link between non-routine problem solving success levels and strategic flexibility of gifted fourth-grade students
Provisionally accepted
- 1Halil Inalcık Science and Art Center, Ministry of National Education, Mathematics Department, Bursa, Türkiye
- 2Bursa Uludağ University, Bursa, Bursa, Türkiye
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The purpose of this correlational study is to explore how success levels in solving non-routine problems among gifted fourth-grade students are linked to their strategic flexibility. Data were gathered from 165 gifted fourth-grade students at a Science and Art Center in Bursa/Türkiye. Binary logistic regression was employed to assess the impact of gender and various indicators of strategic flexibility on success levels in non-routine problem solving. The findings reveal that these students perform exceptionally well in both non-routine problem solving and strategic flexibility. The most commonly used strategies among students are “drawing figures or diagrams”, “reasoning”, and “working backward.” The strategic flexibility indicators with the highest average usage are “selection of the appropriate strategy”, “strategy knowledge”, and “changing strategies when encountering different problems”. A significant and strong correlation was observed between their success in non-routine problem solving and strategic flexibility. Within the regression model, the ability to “select appropriate strategies” emerged as a significant predictor of performance in non-routine problem solving among gifted students. In summary, this study highlights the problem solving strategies used by gifted students in non-routine problems, and the indicators of strategic flexibility that are effective in predicting success.
Keywords: Giftedness, Non-routine problems, Non-routine problem solving, strategic flexibility, Binary logistic regression, Fourth-grade students
Received: 21 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Keleş and Yazgan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Taliha Keleş, Halil Inalcık Science and Art Center, Ministry of National Education, Mathematics Department, Bursa, Türkiye
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.