Page 210 - Pedagoška vizija / A Pedagogical Vision

Eleonora Doz, Mara Cotič, and Maria Chiara Passolunghi

Another executive function associated with word problem-solving is up-
dating. Updating is a complex ability that requires replacing outdated and
irrelevant information with new and relevant information (Miyake and Fried-
man2012).Theabilitytoupdateinformationisfundamentalinwordproblem-
solving, as during the comprehension and representation phase the solver
must integrate all data, replacing existing irrelevant information with new
incoming information (Passolunghi and Pazzaglia 2005). Passolunghi et al.
(2022) explored the role of both inhibition and updating in a sample of fourth
and fifth graders. Children were asked to solve several word problems with
different difficulty: one- and two-step word problems with consistent and
inconsistent language. Findings revealed that inhibition was a significant
predictor of performance in one-step consistent and inconsistent problems,
even after controlling for students’ reading comprehension and intelligence.
Interestingly, however, in more complex problems (two-step inconsistent
problems) inhibition lost its relevance in favour of updating abilities. These
results suggest that updating skills would be particularly important in com-
plex inconsistent problems where the mathematical operation evoked by
the relational term must be firstly processed, but then inhibited and replaced
with the opposite operation. It could thus be speculated that lexical inconsis-
tency and the problem’s complexity may increase the demand on the solver’s
ability to update and integrate information in order to create a coherent
mental representation of the problem.

Environmental Factors
Environmental factors, such as the teaching-learning environment, also de-
serveconsideration astheyinfluencethedevelopment ofstudents’cognitive
abilities underlying word problem-solving, as well as the problem-solving
strategies. In this section, we briefly discuss research on three important fac-
tors in the teaching-learning environment: mathematics textbooks, technol-
ogy, and teachers.

Mathematics Textbooks
Mathematics textbooks are recognized as essential instructional resources
widely employed by educators globally (Verschaffel et al. 2020). Data indicate
that, on average, 96 of teachers make use of textbooks and for the great
majority of teachers textbooks serve as the main basis for their educational
practice (Mullis et al. 2011).
Mathematics textbooks are believed to influence the development of
word problem-solving skills in two main ways: (1) the diversity of problems

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