Written engagement with modelling task situations as a strategy to enhance the comprehension process

Surel, Anna

Zusammenfassung

When it comes to mathematical modelling tasks, students often have difficulties when working on them (Blum & Leiss, 2007). A high proportion of the occurring errors are errors in the comprehension process (Wijaya et al., 2014). These errors lead to further errors in subsequent modelling steps and to incorrect solutions. Although understanding the context of a modelling task and forming a suitable situation model is so important, it is often not focused on in mathematics lessons (Prediger & Krägeloh, 2015). In order to help students to solve modelling tasks correctly, it would be advisable to focus on the comprehension process. One way to integrate this into regular mathematics lessons could be to guide students to engage with the situation of a modelling task. In more detail one option could be to have students retell the given task situation in writing before solving the task.