The present study has done a short research which two targets are: knowing if
the analysed mathematics textbooks of the current Primary Education and former
E.G.B. encourage Spanish children to learn to solve verbal arithmetic problems with
additive structure (addition and subtraction) and knowing if there has been an evolution
in the same direction from the E.G.B. to the present Primary Education.
The principal reason which moves us to write this study is the results of the
Spanish students in the current international reports, such as, PISA (2012) and TIMSS
(2011) reports, which reveals that our students have lower marks in the task of solving
problems than students in other European countries with similar socio-economic levels.
The first step in our study brings us to the revision of former and present
problem resolution models, which can be used as a framework and lets us to know
accurately which difficulties children have from the moment they start to read the
problem to its resolution, when they give the numerical answer.
The second part has the description of the investigation. The variable of our
study is the presence of difficult or easy problems in 4 mathematics textbooks (2 from
the E.G.B. and 2 from the Primary Education), understanding that these two kinds of
problems have a particular attribute that makes them easy or difficult to the students
when they try to understand the statement. This characteristic has to be with the
correspondence between the key words in the text and the mathematical operation
needed to solve it, that is, if there is a direct correspondence between certain words such
as “more” and “more than” with the addition or “less” and “less than” with the
subtraction operation.
The result of this short research reveals that the number of easy problems is
higher than de number of the difficult ones. This final result shows that none of the
analysed books encourage enough the children to learn how to solve an arithmetic
problem when they face it. Other characteristics in the textbooks reveal as relevant in
textbooks such as the layout of the arithmetic problems inside the textbook and the
sections created with a clear purpose to show students how to solve an specific type of
problem.