Training flexibility in dealing with additive situations

Students' difficulties with word problems have been the subject of research for decades. Many studies identified students' ability to construct a situation model that reflects the word problem's situation structure correctly as a major factor. To overcome such difficulties, prior works suggested to provide learners with strategies, which comprise to restructure the situation model by integrating different perspectives on the presented situation. Corresponding trainings have not been investigated systematically yet. We report on an experimental feasibility study investigating a training targeting the proposed strategies. Students from ten grade 2 classrooms (N = 115) in Germany participated in the study. The ten-day training focused on generating and comparing different perspectives on given situations but did not include any word problem solving. Students participating in the training showed significantly higher progress in their ability to restructure situation models and their word problem solving skills from pre-to follow-up test than students from the control-group. The effect of the training was not influenced by students’ language skills. The results indicate that it is feasible to foster word problem solving skills by solely training how to restructure the initial situation model generated from a word problem. Since the experimental group received additional support in contrast to the control group, it is impossible to draw conclusions about the importance of the training for regular mathematics lessons, beyond the fact that the training is effective in principle. The approach should be compared to other approaches to foster word problem solving. •Investigates a training for flexibility in dealing with additive situations.•Training flexibility is feasible without solving word problems.•The training has effects on word problem solving skills.•Similar effects for learners with high and low language skills.•Development of flexibility explains development in word problem solving.