Research Articles (DECDLPE)

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Browsing Research Articles (DECDLPE) by Subject "Algebra"

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    A comparative analysis of word problems in six junior primary Mathematics textbooks in Namibia
    (2019) Albin, Simon; Von Watzdorf, Anja
    In mid-year of 2018, while lecturing on „Solving structured story word problems‟ for developing meanings of the four basic operations to the junior primary student teachers in their second year of the Bachelor Degree of Junior Primary Education at a selected Namibia‟s largest public University, both students and their lecturer of Numeracy Education recognized that the majority of taught story word problems found in junior primary schools‟ textbooks seemed to be of onetothreetypes of word problem structures, while there are actually twenty one word problem structures. This observation led the course lecturer and a student to carry out this research by analyzing the exact types of word problems found in six mathematics textbooks for Namibian junior primary schools currently in use. We analyzed by comparing two series of Grade 1-3 learner‟s books currently in use in Namibia‟s primary schools entitled “Platinum Mathematics” (Alves et al., 2014) and “Solid Foundations” (Burger, 2015) respectively. We analyzed by comparing two series of three textbooks and each series was written by the same authors from Grade 1-3. The literature review suggested that this focus area was under-researched in Namibia, hence its sharp contribution to the body of knowledge in particular the pedagogy of Mathematics. The key findings indicated first, inconsistency of hierarchical inclusion of word problems and second, multiplicative word problems were more (165) than additive word problems (108) translating into 72 multiplication word problems versus 22 word problems for addition in Table 5.1 and 67 multiplication word problems versus 21 word problems for addition as illustrated in table 5.2. The most outstanding finding showed that about 70% (188/273) word problems found in all six learner‟s textbooks were asking students to find the unknown results. This bias surely negatively affects students to reason realistically in Mathematics across the school grades (Ku & Sullivan, 2001) and this is supported by our teaching experience. As per our intuition, word problems and skills developed by solving word problems are the key fundamental reasoning enablers for learners to enjoy Mathematics and solve algebraic related problems in and out of school. Regrettably, this is not happening currently among Namibian learners. The new contribution to the pedagogy of Mathematics of this research study is the findings that indicated that some word problems found in junior primary school learner‟s books are a combination of more than one type of word problems. Hence, there is a need for teachers to ensure effective mastery of 21 word problems for the learners to be able to solve combined word problems.