| Learning to solve arithmetic story problems is an important element of mathematics education. A significant number of students, including many students who can compute the underlying arithmetic operations, have difficulty with story problems. There are many different types and formats of story problems, and teachers, because they must cover the entire mathematics curriculum, can seldom provide students with explicit instruction and sufficient guided practice on each type and format. Therefore, it is important to know if teaching students to solve a subset of the full range of problem types and formats will enable them to solve the types of problems for which no instruction has been provided.; The purpose of this study was to explore if there were any differential effects of selected teaching examples on the generalization of story problem solving skills, and, if so, what kind of teaching examples would promote the most generalization.; Fifteen students in the first grade were divided into three groups and taught the following three different subsets of teaching examples. MCSP problems contained 6 teaching examples that sampled all 3 categories (Combination, Change, and Comparison) but that sampled only one type of mystery box equations. SCMP problems contained 6 teaching examples that sampled only one category (Change) but that sampled all 6 types of mystery box equations. MCMP problems contained 6 teaching examples that sampled all 3 categories and all 6 types of mystery box equations. The three subsets of teaching examples were taught through the instruction featuring the mystery box strategy, choral responding, and response cards.; As results of the study, MCMP problems produced the most generalization of story problem solving on answers and equations of untaught problems. Because the MCMP problems were complicated, the students needed more instructional time for acquisition of those problems as compared with MCSP and SCMP problems. However, students were able to achieve more than 50% correct on answers and equations only after they had received MCMP instruction. Moreover, the more instruction that students received on MCMP problems, the more generalization they exhibited. |
