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Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training
Successfully solving mathematical word problems requires both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. In Realistic Math Education (RME), however, students primarily learn to apply the first of these skills (i.e., representational skills) in the context of word problem solving....
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756284/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26925012 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00191 |
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author | Boonen, Anton J. H. de Koning, Björn B. Jolles, Jelle van der Schoot, Menno |
author_facet | Boonen, Anton J. H. de Koning, Björn B. Jolles, Jelle van der Schoot, Menno |
author_sort | Boonen, Anton J. H. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Successfully solving mathematical word problems requires both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. In Realistic Math Education (RME), however, students primarily learn to apply the first of these skills (i.e., representational skills) in the context of word problem solving. Given this, it seems legitimate to assume that students from a RME curriculum experience difficulties when asked to solve semantically complex word problems. We investigated this assumption under 80 sixth grade students who were classified as successful and less successful word problem solvers based on a standardized mathematics test. To this end, students completed word problems that ask for both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. The results showed that even successful word problem solvers had a low performance on semantically complex word problems, despite adequate performance on semantically less complex word problems. Based on this study, we concluded that reading comprehension skills should be given a (more) prominent role during word problem solving instruction in RME. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4756284 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-47562842016-02-26 Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training Boonen, Anton J. H. de Koning, Björn B. Jolles, Jelle van der Schoot, Menno Front Psychol Psychology Successfully solving mathematical word problems requires both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. In Realistic Math Education (RME), however, students primarily learn to apply the first of these skills (i.e., representational skills) in the context of word problem solving. Given this, it seems legitimate to assume that students from a RME curriculum experience difficulties when asked to solve semantically complex word problems. We investigated this assumption under 80 sixth grade students who were classified as successful and less successful word problem solvers based on a standardized mathematics test. To this end, students completed word problems that ask for both mental representation skills and reading comprehension skills. The results showed that even successful word problem solvers had a low performance on semantically complex word problems, despite adequate performance on semantically less complex word problems. Based on this study, we concluded that reading comprehension skills should be given a (more) prominent role during word problem solving instruction in RME. Frontiers Media S.A. 2016-02-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4756284/ /pubmed/26925012 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00191 Text en Copyright © 2016 Boonen, de Koning, Jolles and Van der Schoot. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Boonen, Anton J. H. de Koning, Björn B. Jolles, Jelle van der Schoot, Menno Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title | Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title_full | Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title_fullStr | Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title_full_unstemmed | Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title_short | Word Problem Solving in Contemporary Math Education: A Plea for Reading Comprehension Skills Training |
title_sort | word problem solving in contemporary math education: a plea for reading comprehension skills training |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756284/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26925012 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00191 |
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