Word problems in different textbooks at the early stage of teaching mathematics comparative analysis

Abstract

In a previous research, Csíkos and Szitányi (2019) studied teachers’ views and pedagogical content knowledge on the teaching of mathematical word problems. While doing so, they reviewed and compared Eastern European textbooks of Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Croatia, and Hungary to see how world problem-solving strategies are presented in commonly used textbooks. Their results suggested that teachers, in general, agreed with the approach of the textbooks regarding the explicit solution strategies and the types of word problems used for teaching problem-solving. They also revealed that the majority of the participants agreed that a word problem-solving algorithm should be introduced to the students as early as in the first school year. These results have been presented at the Varga 100 Conference in November 2019. As the findings suggested a remarkable similarity between the Eastern European textbook approaches, in the current study we decided to conduct further research involving more textbooks from China, Finland, and the United States. Subject Classification: 97U20, 08A50