The effects of a Question and Action strategy on the mathematical word problem-solving skills of students with learning problems in mathematics.

摘要

A limited body of research has investigated the mathematical word problem-solving skills of high school students with learning problems in mathematics. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a cognitive and meta-cognitive, Question and Action strategy (QAS) on the acquisition, follow-up, generalization skills, and word problem-solving errors of high school students with learning problems in mathematics. This study employed a quasi-experimental design with repeated measures. Forty-seven high school students in grades nine to twelve enrolled in resource mathematics courses participated in the study. Twenty-six students in the treatment group received the intervention, while twenty-one students in the comparison group received traditional mathematical word problem-solving instruction. The study lasted twelve weeks. It is hypothesized that there is no statistically significant differences between the mathematical word problem-solving skills, follow-up skills, generalization skills, and error types of students with learning problems in mathematics who received the QAS instruction compared to those who received traditional mathematical word problem-solving instruction. T-test for correlated samples and independent t-test was used to analyze differences between groups on the dependent variables to determine whether they are statistically different from each other (Merten, 1998). Chi-square was used for the statistical analysis of error analysis data. To reject the null hypothesis, the alpha was set at the .05 levels for all tests of statistical significance. Descriptive statistics was used to compute and organize other study data. Data analysis showed significant differences between the acquisition, follow-up, and generalization of mathematical word problem-solving skills, and error types of students who received QAS compared to those who received traditional instruction.; The results of this study indicate that a cognitive and meta-cognitive, QAS improved the acquisition, follow-up, and generalization of mathematical word problem-solving skills of high school students with learning problems in mathematics. Also, QAS reduced the mathematical word problem-solving errors and frequency of occurrence. Caution should be exercised in interpreting study findings due to small sample size, nonrandomization, and other internal validity issues of nonequivalent, comparison group quasi-experimental designs. The implications of study findings, directions for future research, and conclusions were discussed.