Abstract
The study presented in this paper seeks to investigate the impact of authenticity on the students’ disposition to make necessary real world considerations in their word problem solving. The aim is also to gather information about the extent to which different reasons for the students’ behaviors are responsible for not providing solutions that are consistent with the ‘real’ situations described in the word problems. The study includes both written solutions to word problems and interview data from 161 5th graders. The results show an impact of authenticity on both the presence of ‘real life’ considerations in the solution process and on the proportion of written solutions that were really affected by these considerations. The students’ frequent use of superficial solution strategies and their beliefs about mathematical word problem solving were found to be the main reasons for providing solutions that are inconsistent with the situations described in the word problems.
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The author wishes to thank Hans Wallin and Johan Lithner for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Palm, T. Impact of authenticity on sense making in word problem solving. Educ Stud Math 67, 37–58 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-007-9083-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-007-9083-3