| Students with mild disabilities have been found to have deficits in many academic areas, including the application of mathematical operations. Many of these students lack strategies and techniques for assisting them in solving mathematical word problems. A variety of approaches and techniques has been presented as effective practices for teaching students to solve word problems.;A word problem solving strategy which included direct and mnemonic instruction was developed for teaching secondary school students with mild disabilities to solve mathematical word problems. An investigation was conducted to determine if students with mild disabilities were able to acquire and retain a word problem solving strategy, and to determine whether subjects were able to apply the strategy to solving multistep mathematical word problems. A multiple probe design across students (N = 10) was used to evaluate the effects of the strategy. Four of the students were identified as having emotional handicaps; six were identified as having specific learning disabilities.;The independent variable of this investigation was a word problem solving strategy that incorporated effective, empirically-tested instructional techniques developed by the Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities at Kansas University.;The dependent variables were the numbers of appropriate and inappropriate marks made by the subjects when applying the strategy, and the numbers of problems correctly and incorrectly solved by the subjects. The problems were single step word problems and multistep word problems. Data from multistep word problems were collected during the generalization phase of the investigation.;An analysis of the data suggested that students with mild disabilities were able to acquire, retain, and generalize the word problem solving strategy. Social validity measures revealed that teachers and students expressed satisfaction with the strategy training in terms of importance and effectiveness. Implications for providing word problem instruction to students with mild disabilities are discusssed. |
