Both Molina, a first-year teacher, and her students had been trained to tackle word problems by zeroing in on key words like “and,” “more” and “total” — a simplistic approach that Molina said too ...

Tackling these richer, real-world problems can be tougher than solving equations on a worksheet. And that is a good thing, said Jo Boaler, a professor at Stanford University and an expert on math ...

Our goal in this study was to collect in a systematic way empirical data about the scope and the nature of upper elementary school pupils' difficulties with modeling and solving nonroutine additive ...