Middle School Special Education Teachers' Instructional Practices for Solving Mathematical Word Problems: An Exploratory Study

A random sample of middle school special education teachers from various classroom settings completed a survey asking them about what instructional practices and materials they used to teach students with disabilities how to solve word problems, how much time they allocated to problem solving instruction, and what type of problems they gave their students to solve. Overall, regardless of setting, the teachers focused primarily on instructional practices that teach students how to solve word problems (e.g., visualization) but not on practices that encourage analytical thinking necessary to promote transfer of learning (e.g., use of analogy). The teachers gave more straightforward and practice-oriented word problems than complex, real-world word problems to solve. Finally, the majority of the teachers provided one hour or less of problem solving instruction per week. Implications for further research and recommendations for improving special education teacher knowledge of problem solving instructional practices in mathematics for students with disabilities are provided