Arab Educational Information Network

At the elementary school age, children are in need to seek help from more knowledgeable individual in order to cope with the difficulties in learning and to overcome challenges they may encounter in solving problems. Children, to be self-regulated learners, must be aware of the type of help they would seek, when to seek help and from whom to seek it. The help sought by pupils in classroom is of two types according to its achievement goals, instrumental and executive. The present study is designed to investigate the effectiveness of instrumental help-seeking strategy in developing elementary school pupils' problem-solving skills in English class, to investigate the difference between the experimental and control groups in their performance in the problem-solving test, to identify the difference between male and female pupils in their responses to help-seeking strategy, and to investigate the effectiveness of instrumental help-seeking strategy in English class from the point of view of English language teachers in elementary schools. The type of study followed was experimental in which help-seeking strategy was applied on a sample of (30) fifth grade elementary school pupils. Pre-test-posttest experiment has been used to calculate data. The experiment has lasted for (10) weeks and results of the study indicated that: 1) Help-seeking is a self-regulated strategy which has an effective role in developing problem-solving skills, particularly in elementary school age. 2) The participants who have taken part in the help-seeking strategy (the experimental group) show better performance in problem-solving test than those who have not participated in the experiment (the control group). 3) Both male and female pupils in the experimental group have positively responded to help-seeking strategy, i.e. there was no significant difference between male and female pupils. 4) English language teachers have shown positive attitudes towards involving help-seeking strategy in the classroom activities for its effective role. Finally some recommendations have been introduced to highlight the importance of strategic help-seeking in English classroom. (Published Abstract)