Elementary school-aged children especially struggle with word problems requiring realistic considerations or multiple operations, containing lexical inconsistency, or with the unknown in the first position¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · quant-synthesisr2·q3
Currency · newest study 2024 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i? The task characteristics with the largest observed associations were realistic considerations, multiple mathematical operations, lexical inconsistency, and first-position unknowns. → T. Vessonen 2024
Evidence¶
T. Vessonen 2024¶
T. Vessonen, M. Dahlberg, H. Hellstrand, A. Widlund, J. Korhonen, P. Aunio, A. Laine. (2024). Task Characteristics Associated with Mathematical Word Problem-Solving Performance Among Elementary School-Aged Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09954-2
q3 · i? · quant-synthesis · r2
Synthesis statement from the meta-analysis (K = 69) identifying the characteristics with the strongest associations with performance among elementary schoolers; the article attributes this to the pooled g = 0.39 to 4.26 findings. No per-characteristic effect size is printed in the supplied text.
"The findings highlight that elementary school-aged children especially struggle with mathematical word problems requiring realistic considerations or multiple mathematical operations, containing lexical inconsistency, and problems in which the position of the unknown is the first value."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Five of six investigated linguistic task characteristics (position of the unknown, schematic structure, irrelevant information, realistic considerations, lexical consistency) are associated with elementary schoolers' word problem-solving performance — a broader claim this one bears on
- Number of operations is the numerical task characteristic associated with elementary schoolers' word problem-solving, with multi-step problems harder than single-step — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- No general association found between a familiar situational narrative or the required operation and elementary schoolers' word problem-solving performance — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
hardest-word-problem-characteristics-elementary |
title |
Elementary school-aged children especially struggle with word problems requiring realistic considerations or multiple operations, containing lexical inconsistency, or with the unknown in the first position |
description |
Elementary school-aged children especially struggle with word problems requiring realistic considerations or multiple operations, containing lexical inconsistency, or with the unknown in the first position |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2024 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-21 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — t-vessonen-2024 |
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