March 2009, Vol. 40, Issue 2
Students’ Overuse of Proportionality on Missing-Value Problems: How Numbers May Change Solutions
Wim Dooren; Dirk De Bock; Marleen Evers; Lieven Verschaffel
Previous research has shown that when confronted with missing-value word problems, primary school students strongly tend to use proportional solution approaches, even if these approaches are inappropriate. The authors investigated whether (besides the missing-value formulation of word problems) the numbers appearing in word problems are part of the superficial cues that lead students to (over)use proportionality.
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