An Experimental Study Of Word-Problem Solving Of Elementary School Students With Mathematics Disabilities

The purposes of this research were to examine the word-problem solving process of elementary school students with mathematics disabilities (MD) and to assess the effect of a remediation instruction.The whole research consisted of two studies:1. Fifteen general, fifteen MD/RD (comorbidity of mathematics and reading disabilities) and fifteen MD-Only (only mathematics disabilities) students were selected from grades 2-4 of an elementary school as the participants in study one. Protocol methods and Clinical interviews were employed to understand the word-problem solving process of these forty-five participants.2. Four MD students were selected from the participants of study one as participants in study two. Small-n ABC design was employed to assess the effect of the remediation instruction.The main findings of the whole research were as follows:1. The word-problem solving process of MD/RD students and MD-Only students was alike. Compared with general students, the time spent in the integration stage by the MD students was significantly less, while the time spent in the planning and monitoring stage was significantly more.2. Compared with general students, the score of comprehension errors, schema errors and strategy errors got by the MD students was significantly higher; the score of computation errors was similar.3. The score of the examination got by the MD students of grades 2-3 was significantly lower than that got by general students, but in gradefour, the MD students got the same score as general students. The number of steps of the word-problem influenced the MD students' score of the examination.4. In grade two, the combine-schema and change-schema had also come into being. The compare-schema and whole-part-schema came into being later.5. Cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies were seldom used by all the students participated in study one. The meta-cognitive strategies used by the MD students were significantly less than those used by general students. The main meta-cognitive strategy used by all the students was self-monitoring. The main cognitive strategies used by the MD students were Key-Word strategy and forthcoming problem-solving strategy. The main cognitive strategy used by general students was backwards problem-solving strategy.6. The remediation instruction of addition and subtraction word-problem solving effectively improved the problem-solving abilities of the MD students. Maintenance of instruction effects was evident.The view of "absence of schema-retrieval stage" was put forward to interpret the word-problem solving process of the MD students. Some MD students did not experience the integration stage (schema-retrieval stage) but directly entered the planning and monitoring stage.This research supported Hegarty et al.'s hypothesis: the poor problem solvers adopt the direct translation strategy during the problem-solving process. Most of the MD students did not base their plans on the situation described in the problem, but on some improper strategies.On the basis of the findings of this research, implications for word problem instruction were recommended.