This paper focuses on difficulties that primary school students have in facing mathematical word problems. In particular, we are interested in exploring how they develop in the transition from grade 2 to grade 5. The research basis of the hypothesis is that some difficulties detected in grade 5 are already predictable in grade 2. Starting from the…

Purpose: Math word problem solving, a form of reading comprehension, is complicated by mathematical lexical ambiguity (e.g., the word "difference" can mean "dissimilarity" in everyday discourse but "the answer in a subtraction problem" in math). This study examined the role of mathematical lexical ambiguity in math…

An increasing number of high-stakes mathematics standardised tests around the world place an emphasis on using mathematical word problems to assess students' mathematical understanding. Not only do these assessments require children to think mathematically, but making sense of these tests' mathematical word problems also brings children's language…

This study aims to present the potential of Participatory Action Research (PAR) to bring together the experiences of teachers and researchers with the intention of improving teaching practices and students' learning outcomes. Participants in the study were 7 teachers, their 160 fifths grade students, and researchers (authors). Teachers and…

For decades, researchers have asserted that K-12 teachers should embed reading comprehension instruction within each academic discipline, including "technical subjects" such as engineering. Recently, this assertion has become a source of controversy among researchers and practitioners who believe that time spent on teaching reading…

This study explores the effectiveness of integrating morphological instruction within comprehension strategy instruction. Participants were 203 students (N = 117 fifth-grade; 86 sixth-grade) from four urban schools who were randomly assigned to the intervention (N = 110; morphological problem-solving within comprehension strategy instruction) or…

Mathematical Word Problem Solving of Students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders and Students with Typical Development Young Seh Bae This study investigated mathematical word problem solving and the factors associated with the solution paths adopted by two groups of participants (N=40), students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and typically…

Diagnostic information is a centrepiece of educational decision making. Far-reaching decisions like placements within multi-tiered school systems may have a huge long-term impact on the achieved level of education. Therefore, such decisions should be substantiated or complemented by objective and prognostically valid information. To this end, we…

With the increased emphasis on informational text with Common Core State Standards and the difficulty many students have with this type of text, this study examined the effects of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR) on informational text comprehension and metacognitive awareness of fifth grade students. Participating students included a…

Borrowing the concept of story grammar from reading comprehension literature, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of teaching "word problem (WP) story grammar" on arithmetic WP solving that emphasizes the algebraic expression of mathematical relations in conceptual models. Participants were five students in Grades 4 and 5 with or…

"Inquiry Training," a teaching technique promoted during the 1960s, involves students gathering information about a discrepant event or puzzling situation, and formulating theories to explain the event. Continuing the work of two studies into the efficacy of Inquiry Training (subsequently renamed Cognition Enhancement), a more refined…

One hundred French children in grade five participated in an experiment to determine how the problem frame facilitates comprehension of a problem solution text. Results demonstrate the positive role of frames in macrostructure construction and support the model of T. A. van Dijk and W. Kintsch (1983). (SLD)

Proposing that teachers can help children learn more effectively by promoting metacognition and the acquisition of problem solving strategies, this report describes research studying the effectiveness of the experimental curriculum, Informed Strategies for Learning (ISL), in increasing third and fifth grade students' reading comprehension skills.…

Systematic but unanticipated differences in patterns of responses to a test between two or more groups is generally taken as evidence of test bias. This study assessed whether a carefully-targeted instructional sequence could influence the effects of bias. A reading comprehension test with items previously identified as biased for certain groups…

The purpose of this study was to make comparisons between intermediate grade black pupils in an individualized, computer-supported instructional program and intermediate grade black pupils who were in a traditional, self-contained classroom instructional program. Specifically, the basic problem was that of determining the extent to which an…