PROPORTIONAL REASONING: VARIABLE INFLUENCING THE PROBLEMS DIFFICULTY LEVEL AND ONE’S USE OF PROBLEM SOLVING STRATEGIES

• Main Author: Olof Bjorg Steinthorsdottir
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.529.3129; http://www.emis.de/proceedings/PME30/5/169.pdf

This study was conducted to investigate the influence of contextual structure and number structure on individuals ’ use of strategies and success rate in solving missing value proportion problems. Fifty-three eighth graders in one school in Reykjavik, Iceland, participated in this study. Twenty-seven females and twenty-six males were individually interviewed as they solved sixteen missing value proportion problems. The problems number structure was carefully manipulated within planned parameters of complexity. The number complexity formed a parallel hierarchy among the contextual structure. The findings in this study indicate that number structure influenced strategy use and success to a greater extent than contextual structure. BACKGROUND Researchers have identified variables that contribute to an individual’s ease or difficulty in solving proportion problems. Problem contextual structure1 and number structure2 are among these variables and therefore may influence one’s use of problem solving strategy and problem difficulty level. Number structure and