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While I'd agree that students often approach word problems by basically memorizing mappings between a problem class and a small set of equations, I'm not sure t
by glyn 17y ago
While I'd agree that students often approach word problems by basically
memorizing mappings between a problem class and a small set of equations, I'm not sure that merely teaching them the mechanics of mathematics in the abstract is sufficient for imparting a thorough, practical understanding of the subject.
My experience with math-related courses was that I had the greatest difficulty generalizing the word-problem aspects into being able to reason about novel problems. A lot of the lectures and texts kind of paid lip service to the idea of problem solving in a general manner, but I think there's a lot of room for improvement in terms of capturing and teaching the underlying requisite types of mental activity, in a way that's explicitly procedural.
- yequalsx 17y agoI agree with you. The problem I've encountered is that students who lack intellectual curiosity aren't motivated by the practical applications found in algebra textbooks. They aren't motivated by any sort of problem. So there is a reduction to the lowest denominator. That is, we give word problems that are reducible to mappings to a small set of equations.