The main purpose of this research is to examine the informal strategies of fifth and sixth grade students while solving inverse proportional word problems. Multiple case study was used in this study. The research was carried out in a public middle school from a southern city of Türkiye. The participants of the research consist of three fifth and…

Word problems are frequently taught in shallow contexts, where students primarily use procedural knowledge to solve problems and struggle to transfer their learning to real-life situations. This study examines how extra-mathematical knowledge and motivation may enhance the learning process. The study involved 345 fifth-grade students (51.2% male)…

Drawing bar diagrams has been shown to improve performance on mathematical word problems wherein the relational keyword is consistent with the required arithmetic operation. This study extends this by testing the effectiveness of bar diagram drawing for word problems with an inconsistent keyword-arithmetic operation mapping. Seventy-five fifth…

Every educator knows the sinking feeling of a lesson gone wrong. As teachers look around the room and realize that many of their students are just not getting it, they often feel like failures. However, the struggle students experience as they persevere through high-quality challenging tasks is not a sign of failure, but rather a key aspect of…

When teaching the multiplicative domain in New Zealand primary schools, teachers tend to spend a greater proportion of time on the meaning and processes of multiplication, to the detriment of a specific focus on understanding the concept of division. When division is taught, it tends to be by reversing the context and turning the division…

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…

In this research we aim to reproduce and extend the positive results about the effect of humor in solving mathematical word problems. We examined whether solving humorous word problems has some effect on either word problems demanding realistic consideration or word problems of the well-known routine type. Fifth- and sixth-grade students (N=1,153)…

Gifted students are individuals who show extraordinary development in at least one area compared to their peers. The common feature of gifted students is their creativity. The gifted students need training to improve their skills. If they do not receive such training, their abilities will fade out over time. Problem posing is one of the activities…

Problem solving is often regarded as one of the most essential cognitive functions in our daily lives, and, for that reason, educational theorists have long stressed the need for its development. As cognitive flexibility is a fundamental characteristic necessary throughout the problem-solving process, the purpose of this study is to analyse…

Syntactic language features of word problems have often been identified by assessment studies and interview studies as potential obstacles in word problem solving. However, students' processes of noticing and interpreting these features have only rarely been investigated in depth because noticing is hard to investigate. Eye-tracking methodology…

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…

Problem-solving is considered one of the thinking skills that must be possessed in 21st-century education because problem-solving skills are required to solve all problems that arise. The problem-solving stages that can be used are Polya's four steps, namely, understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, and looking back.…

Choosing the right strategy is an important condition to successfully solve math problems. Research studies often present individual types of strategies more or less separately. This study aims to determine student solutions of selected word problems in the whole context of the solution process. In this context, such nonstandard word problems…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the problem-solving techniques that students in a fifth-grade classroom applied while solving mathematical word problems. Fifth-grade students in a private school with Ministry of Education curricula in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, were given a set of 15-word problems to solve with detailed justifications. The…

Geometry is one of the basic areas of school mathematics education, and it is important for elementary students. However, students with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) struggle with geometry learning. Research has demonstrated that concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) teaching is an effective practice for students with learning…