Microgenetic Analysis of Group-Based Solution of Complex Two-Step Mathematical World Problems by Fourth Graders

Abstract

A form of socially assisted group learning based on a modified version of reciprocal teaching for mathematics (Campione, Brown, & Connell, 1988) was evaluated in terms of its effectiveness in promoting fourth graders' solution of complex 2-step word problems. The emphasis in this method is for an adult tutor to elicit solution suggestions from students and to explore the multiple solutions in seeking group agreement. The method focuses attention both on world representations underlying numbers and on transfer of problem solution planning skills to children over time. The results were compared with those from a modeling-reinforcement tutoring control condition and a classroom activity control in a 10-week study of fourth graders' solution of 4 types of 2-step math word problems, constructed to avoid keywords. Individuals who received either type of training earned higher scores for all problem types than did controls on quizzes; children in the modified reciprocal teaching condition outscored those in the modeling condition on problems that required information to be added from outside the problem and on a quiz of mixed problem types. Subsequent analysis of solutions and videotaped math behaviors suggested that those in the socially assisted learning condition used labeled representations in problem solving more effectively and deduced implied information earlier and more often than those in the modeling condition.