Author:

Keywords:

cognitive skills, comprehension of text and graphics, instructional design, mathematics, problem solving, reading comprehension

Abstract:

Mathematical word problem solving is considered to be an important part of the elementary school’s mathematics curriculum. It is assumed that word problems are a good vehicle to teach children how to construct and apply mathematical models to problem situations in the real world, and to develop general problem solving skills. However, many children have great difficulties solving these problems. Especially the construction of a representation of the problem and linking that representation to an accurate mathematical model turn out to be of great difficulty, esp. when the word problem is of a non-standard nature. Many researchers and curriculum designers have proposed various ways to help children to make these critical steps of the mathematical modeling cycle, e.g. by providing children various kinds of pictorial or schematic representations or by stimulating/teaching them to create a representation of their own. Despite these attempts, we still do not have a good insight into the processes involved in children’s creation or use of such external representations, on their impact on children’s solution processes and outcomes, and on optimal ways of teaching them. The goal of the symposium is to bring together four papers that report recent research on the role of external representations in mathematical word problem solving, and to discuss them from a cognitive-psychological and educational perspective. While all four studies involve pictorial and/or schematic representations for word problems, they include a variety of problems and populations, ranging from beginning elementary school children solving additive word problems to in-service elementary school teachers.