Providing realistic solutions for word problems proves to be challenging. A possible explanation is the influence of individual's expectations and beliefs about word problems. This explanation was tested in the present study in an out-of-school context. Specifically, the study assessed effects of (1) prompting participants to make realistic…

Background/purpose. The strategic goal of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) literacy is to develop scientifically and technologically equipped global citizens who are innovators and problem-solvers in a rapidly changing world. The study contributes to this goal by drawing pedagogical implications from examining college…

The development of a set of rubrics for teachers and curriculum designers interested in the quality of numeracy tasks emerged from our struggle with an attempt to clarify the distinction between numeracy and mathematics. Shifting our perspective from asking what numeracy and mathematics are to asking what they are about led to the…

The purpose of this study is to provide reliable evidence of the observable correlates of the Aha! moment and what this means for moving from surface to deep thinking. The study analyses facial expressions and body language from video recordings of students solving problems, followed by interviews, focus groups, and surveys. The problem-solving…

Critical thinking is a fundamental competence in 21st-century education, particularly in mathematics, where students frequently encounter contradictory information that requires logical reasoning and reflective judgment. This study explores the stages of critical thinking among junior high school students when solving contradictory mathematical…

Much attention has been paid to computational thinking (CT) as a problem-solving approach across various curricula, particularly in mathematics. Most studies solely used a digital instrument or examined transfer of program solving ability, neglecting the mathematics knowledge domain or how the novel digital instrument functions alongside the…

In this article the authors describe how standard textbook questions can be turned into open questions to promote problem solving and reasoning. Six example solutions are given to one problem showing how an open problem can cater to the diversity of students in your class.

The development of proportional reasoning is crucial for higher-level mathematical skills. Various studies have demonstrated that the numerical structures of problems have an impact on the strategies used to solve direct proportional problems. This research was conducted to determine eighth grade students' strategies for solving inverse…

This study forms part of a classroom teaching experiment on the development of a group of 25 9-10 years old students' algebraic thinking. More specifically, it explored their reasoning while solving word problems built around functional relationships to determine how they generalized through questions posed using natural language, drawn figures or…

The cultural diversity of Malaysia gives a way to three types of public primary schools which vary in terms of cultural and medium of instruction. This study aimed to explore the difference between the performance of grade four primary students from the rural region of Malaysia in solving word problems involving measurement formula and higher…

Mathematical reasoning, a fundamental aspect of human cognition, poses significant challenges for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite recent advancements in natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs), AI's ability to replicate human-like reasoning, generalization, and efficiency remains an ongoing research…

The purpose of this qualitative research is to analyze the reflective thinking process of prospective elementary teacher in numeracy problems in terms of their mathematical disposition. The subjects in this study were 26 prospective elementary school teachers who had attended elementary mathematics lectures. The focus in this research is the…

This dissertation comprises two articles. In the first article, I review and synthesize literature on how prospective teachers (PTs) might evaluate students' mathematical thinking as manifested in written work. After defining evaluation, I argue that evaluating students' thinking in productive ways is both necessary and desirable within the…

This study focused on capturing the research landscape of past studies related to mathematics problem solving in elementary education from 1969 to 2021 through a bibliometric analysis. All the 159 bibliographic data involved were extracted from the Scopus database. The findings show an increasing trend in publication and citation over the years.…

Problem solving lies at the core of engineering and remains central in school mathematics. Word problems are a traditional instructional mechanism for learning how to apply mathematics to solving problems. Word problems are formulated so that a student can identify data relevant to the question asked and choose a set of mathematical operations…