Prospective elementary teachers’ use of contextual knowledge when solving problematic word problems

This study investigates the extent to which pre-service elementary teachers (PETs) use their contextual knowledge to model and solve eight problems for which the result of the arithmetic operation is problematic, if one takes into consideration the reality of the context. A paper-andpencil test was administered to 621 PETs enrolled in mathematics content courses. The test included eight experimental items and four buffer items. The findings for a sample of 97 PETs are not very encouraging. The total number of realistic responses varied from 5 to 80 (out of 97 possible for each problem). Overall, the percentage of realistic responses on the eight problematic items was only about 31%.