How do students communicate in writing and which difficulties do they have in solving a mathematical problem?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.48489/quadrante.33950Keywords:
written communication, problem solving, difficulties, high schoolAbstract
By the end of compulsory education, students should have developed problem-solving and written communication skills. The Portuguese curriculum emphasises these skills by encouraging students to justify their ideas and decisions and to link their arguments in an organised and coherent way. Difficulties are an integral part of this process, perceived by students when solving problems or writing their solutions. Their identification is a necessary step so that they are overcome later. Therefore, our aims are: (1) to understand how students communicate their problem-solving in writing, and (2) to identify the difficulties they experience in problem-solving and written communication. We developed a system of categories to characterise written communication and to analyse the difficulties observed in students’ resolutions. The resolutions analysed were written by six groups of 11th grade students in response to a mathematical problem presented to them. We obtained one incorrect, one partially correct and four correct resolutions, with diverse levels of justification, ranging from null to high, and with all types of justification that could be found. One of the groups did not present any difficulties, while the others had varying difficulties related to persistence, interpretation, selection of information, strategy, writing, and coherence.
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