Prior short-term studies have shown the effectiveness of worked examples and self-explanation prompts in improving elementary students' mathematics knowledge. However, year-long classroom-based interventions have been tested only with older students. The purpose of the current study was to explore the effectiveness of a year-long classroom…

Mathematical problem solving takes on many different forms and has long been established in school curricula with the terms, problems and problem solving taking on varied meanings. This article proposes a way of engaging students in mathematical open inquiry using a video clip as stimulus. It discusses findings from a recent study conducted in a…

Assessment of students' critical thinking and problem solving in engineering is a real challenge for classroom teachers and researchers. Yet, students demonstrate evidence of learning through multiple means, including written reflections. The purpose of this study was to explore how students in grades 5 and 7 reflect on what they had learned about…

The present research investigated whether an illustration and/or a warning could help students to (a) build a situational model of the problem situation and (b) solve problematic word problems (P-items) that require realistic thinking more realistically. In 2 similar studies conducted in Turkey and Belgium, the authors presented 10- to 11-year-old…

Previous research has shown that when confronted with missing-value word problems, primary school students strongly tend to use proportional solution approaches, even if these approaches are inappropriate. The authors investigated whether (besides the missing-value formulation of word problems) the numbers appearing in word problems are part of…