Students' difficulties in differentiating the direct proportion and inverse proportion problems cause interference. Proactive interference is the error that occurs when old information (concept of direct proportion) interferes with new information (concept of inverse proportion). In solving the problem of inverse proportion, students often use the…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the implementation of a researcher-created numberless word problem instructional unit designed to introduce second-grade students to word problems in the semantic category of "compare with the word more, smaller unknown." The 10-day instructional unit incorporated three elements:…

In the present study, researchers used problem-posing instruction to examine elementary students' understanding of multiplication. Students in fourth and fifth grade classrooms (n = 24) from a rural school district participated in a semester-long study. The focus of this study was examining student solutions to two specific lessons with problems…

Previous research examining comparison relations in word problems primarily focused on students' achievements in word problems with one operation. In this paper, we extend previous research to examine the achievement of students of different ages on word problems that integrate compare and combine word problems, hereafter referred to as…

Fraction arithmetic facility is fundamental to learning more advanced math topics. However, attaining the ability to add and subtract fractions is hard for many students. The present longitudinal study examined students' growth on simple addition and subtraction word problems between fourth and sixth grades (N = 536). Latent class growth analyses…

Little is known about mismatches between the language of mathematics testing instruments and the rich linguistic repertoires that African American children develop at home and in the community. The current study aims to provide a proof of concept and novel explanatory item response design that uses error analysis to investigate the relationship…

National and state standards in the US have emphasized the importance of solving and posing word problems in students' mathematics learning for decades. Therefore, it is essential for prospective teachers (PTs) to have the mathematical knowledge necessary to teach these skills to their future students. Unfortunately, little research has…

Because word problems present mathematical information through a scenario, they are language-intensive and require mathematical and reading comprehension skills to solve them. In addition, they are linguistically complex, which makes them challenging for all learners, especially multilingual learners. Given the rising number of dual-language…

This article uses the concurrent mixed methods design to explore the errors made by 171 Grade Seven learners in algebraic problem-solving within the Assin Central Municipality in Ghana. The participants were categorized into low-achieving and high-achieving groups based on their performance in a pretest, to help provide a detailed examination of…

This study investigated the role of the bar model method, a significant aspect of the Singapore mathematics curriculum, in the remediation of seventh-grade students' errors on algebra word problems. To accomplish this purpose, we first assessed students' errors on a written test involving algebra problems and identified ten students based on the…

The adverse influence of the presence of an irrelevant number and language inconsistency in a word problem is well known. Our study focused on the combination of these two variables and on the position of the irrelevant number in the word problem for Grade 6 pupils. The study has a mixed design. Item Response Theory was used to make equally able…

Solving word problems involving 'Time' is an important skill but poor mastery of the skill among elementary students has often been reported in the literature. In addition, the available diagnostic tools in the literature might be less efficient for identifying the various errors made by many students in solving word problems. Thus, an online…

In mathematics, the expectation to set up and solve word problems emerges as early as kindergarten; however, many students who experience mathematics difficulty (MD) and dual-language learners often present with specific challenges in this area. To investigate why these populations experience word-problem difficulty, we examined the word, problem…

In mathematics, the expectation to set up and solve word problems emerges as early as kindergarten; however, many students who experience mathematics difficulty (MD) and dual-language learners often present with specific challenges in this area. To investigate why these populations experience word-problem difficulty, we examined the word, problem…

This study, using a quantitative approach, examined Spanish and South African pre-service teachers' responses to translating word problems based on direct proportionality into equations. The participants were 79 South African and 211 Spanish prospective primary school teachers who were in their second year of a Bachelor of Education degree. The…