Word problem solving approaches in mathematics textbooks: a comparison between Singapore and Spain

[EN]Singaporean children are the best performers on international achievement tests in mathematics (i.e. the TIMSS). Their excellent results could be due at least partly to certain characteristics of the textbooks used there (Oates 2014). Therefore, these materials could be taken as a good benchmark...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Vicente Martín, Santiago, Sánchez Fernández, María del Rosario, Verschaffel, Lieven
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Salamanca (USAL)
Repositorio:GREDOS. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Salamanca
OAI Identifier:oai:gredos.usal.es:10366/154449
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10366/154449
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Word problem solving
Mathematics textbooks
Primary education
Assessment and evaluation
Educational system
Educational Measurement
Problem Solving
6102.04 Psicología Escolar
evaluación de la enseñanza
solución de problemas
Descripción
Sumario:[EN]Singaporean children are the best performers on international achievement tests in mathematics (i.e. the TIMSS). Their excellent results could be due at least partly to certain characteristics of the textbooks used there (Oates 2014). Therefore, these materials could be taken as a good benchmark to describe and evaluate aspects of the textbooks of other regions that could be improved. For this reason, the word problem-solving approaches proposed by primary education math textbooks from Spain were compared with those from Singapore based on the presence of the problem-solving steps that are most characteristic of a genuine word problem-solving approach. The results show that the Singaporean textbooks include much more reasoning than the Spanish textbooks, while they include fewer problem-solving steps related to strategies and checking. We conclude that Singaporean textbooks provide better scaffolding for high-quality learning of word problem solving than Spanish textbooks.