Word Problems

Research by cognitive psychologists and mathematics educators has often been compartmentalized by departmental boundaries. This book integrates this research to show its relevance to the debate on the reform of mathematics education. Beginning with a discussion of the different knowledge structures that represent rule learning and conceptual learning, the discussion proceeds to the application of these ideas to solving word problems. Three chapters on elementary, multistep and algebra problems examine similarities and differnces in the cognitive skills required by students as the problems become more complex. The next section on abstracting, adapting and representing solutions illustrates different ways in which solutions can be transferred to related problems. The last section focuses on topics emphasized in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards and concludes with a chapter that evaluates some of the programmes on curriculum reform.