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Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems
BACKGROUND: In two studies we investigated whether removing opportunities to calculate could improve students’ subsequent ability to solve similar word problems. Students were first asked to write explanations for three word-problems that they thought would help another student understand the proble...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer International Publishing
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6635520/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31312999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0175-2 |
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author | Givvin, Karen B. Moroz, Veronika Loftus, William Stigler, James W. |
author_facet | Givvin, Karen B. Moroz, Veronika Loftus, William Stigler, James W. |
author_sort | Givvin, Karen B. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In two studies we investigated whether removing opportunities to calculate could improve students’ subsequent ability to solve similar word problems. Students were first asked to write explanations for three word-problems that they thought would help another student understand the problems. Half of the participants explained typical word problems (i.e., problems with enough information to make calculating an answer possible), while the other half explained the same problems with numbers removed, making calculating an answer impossible. We hypothesized that removing opportunities to calculate would induce students to think relationally about the word problems, which would result in higher levels of performance on subsequent transfer problems. RESULTS: In both studies, participants who explained the non-calculable problems performed significantly better on the transfer test than participants who explained the typical (i.e., calculable) problems. This was so in spite of the manipulation not fully suppressing students’ desire to calculate. Many students in the non-calculable group explicitly stated that they needed numbers in order to answer the question or made up numbers with which to calculate. There was a significant, positive relationship between the frequency with which students made up numbers and their self-reported mathematics anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: We hypothesized that the mechanism at play was a reduction in instrumental thinking (and an increase in relational thinking). Interventions designed to help students remediate prior mathematical failure should perhaps focus less on the specific skills students are lacking, and more on the dispositions they bring to the task of “doing mathematics.” |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6635520 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Springer International Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-66355202019-08-01 Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems Givvin, Karen B. Moroz, Veronika Loftus, William Stigler, James W. Cogn Res Princ Implic Original Article BACKGROUND: In two studies we investigated whether removing opportunities to calculate could improve students’ subsequent ability to solve similar word problems. Students were first asked to write explanations for three word-problems that they thought would help another student understand the problems. Half of the participants explained typical word problems (i.e., problems with enough information to make calculating an answer possible), while the other half explained the same problems with numbers removed, making calculating an answer impossible. We hypothesized that removing opportunities to calculate would induce students to think relationally about the word problems, which would result in higher levels of performance on subsequent transfer problems. RESULTS: In both studies, participants who explained the non-calculable problems performed significantly better on the transfer test than participants who explained the typical (i.e., calculable) problems. This was so in spite of the manipulation not fully suppressing students’ desire to calculate. Many students in the non-calculable group explicitly stated that they needed numbers in order to answer the question or made up numbers with which to calculate. There was a significant, positive relationship between the frequency with which students made up numbers and their self-reported mathematics anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: We hypothesized that the mechanism at play was a reduction in instrumental thinking (and an increase in relational thinking). Interventions designed to help students remediate prior mathematical failure should perhaps focus less on the specific skills students are lacking, and more on the dispositions they bring to the task of “doing mathematics.” Springer International Publishing 2019-07-16 /pmc/articles/PMC6635520/ /pubmed/31312999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0175-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
spellingShingle | Original Article Givvin, Karen B. Moroz, Veronika Loftus, William Stigler, James W. Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title | Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title_full | Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title_fullStr | Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title_full_unstemmed | Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title_short | Removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
title_sort | removing opportunities to calculate improves students’ performance on subsequent word problems |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6635520/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31312999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0175-2 |
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