Processing in solving mathematical word problems of grade 6 students

Abstract

This quantitative study aims to describe the processes of 206 elementary students in solving mathematical word problem guided by Polya’s problem-solving framework. The results collectively imply that when understanding the problem, students read and tried to understand the word problem, students were not able to perform specific thinking processes which are a key to understand the problem entirely. While devising a plan, although there are students who made use of representations and carefully picked mathematical operations to be used in the word problem, the majority of them still were unsure and were not able to use illustrations/diagrams to represent the problem situation. In carrying out the plan, students did self-regulate their solution processes to ensure the accuracy of their solutions. Lastly, when looking back, they review their answers and try to check the preciseness and validity of their calculations and answers. Thus, even if students did perform the last two steps (devising a plan and looking back) of the problem-solving framework of Polya (as cited in Maglicco, 2016), they still failed to do the thinking processes in the first step (understanding the problem) and creating illustrations in the second step (devising a plan). Students still would not be able to successfully solve the word problem presented due to misinterpretation and incorrect plan. Keywords: mathematical word problem, processes