Word problems versus image-rich problems: an analysis of effects of task characteristics on students’ performance on contextual mathematics problems

ABSTRACT

This article reports on a post hoc study using a randomised controlled trial with 31,842 students in the Netherlands and an instrument consisting of 21 paired problems. The trial showed a variability in the differences of students’ results in solving contextual mathematical problems with either a descriptive or a depictive representation of the problem situation. In this study the relation between this variability and two task characteristics is investigated: (1) complexity of the task representation; and (2) the content domain of the task. We found indications that differences in performance on descriptive and depictive representations of the problem situation are related to the content domain of the problems. One of the tentative conclusions is that for depicted problems in the domain of measurement and geometry the inferential step from representation of the problem situation to the mathematical problem to be solved is smaller than for word problems.

KEYWORDS:

• contextual mathematics problem
• task characteristics
• word problem

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Kees Hoogland http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0650-6999

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (Dutch Ministry of Education) under the programme Onderwijsbewijs II (Evidence-based Research in Education), under grant number ODB10068.