Education Week – Liana Heitin
“Students would be better off if algebra teachers began their lessons with word problems, according to a recent study covered by my colleague Sarah Sparks, rather than waiting to present them until students have mastered equations. Starting with symbols can impede learning, Mitchell J. Nathan, an educational psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in the article. “Language itself provides an entry point to mathematical reasoning that is highly superior to the algebraic equation.”…But as the researchers on the word-problem study note, students who learning English, and those who have other language challenges, tend to have difficulty with word problems.”(more)