Dificultad de los problemas verbales en los libros de primaria de Singapur y España
- Santiago Vicente Martín 1
- Lieven Verschaffel 2
- Rosario Sánchez Fernández 1
- 1 Universidad de Salamanca. España
- 2 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Bélgica
ISSN: 0212-3096, 1887-1984
Year of publication: 2022
Issue: 112
Pages: 41-64
Type: Article
More publications in: Números: Revista de didáctica de las matemáticas
Abstract
For the education systems of Singapore and Spain, problem solving is the cornerstone of the primary mathematics curriculum. However, TIMSS results indicate that Singaporean students can solve more difficult word problems than Spanish students. This may be due, to some extent, to the way in which each country's curriculum is concretized through its textbooks. To verify this hypothesis, this paper compares the difficulty of verbal number problems in mathematics textbooks from the most widely used publisher in each country. The results show that the Singapore textbooks contain more difficult word problems than the Spanish textbooks, both in general and at each school level. Understanding the design of textbooks can be useful to improve them so that students learn better problem-solving skills.