Abstract
Research has shown that problem posing, in a sense the “inverse activity” of problem-solving, can positively affect students’ problem-solving skills. We report the design and results of an empirical study in which the potential positive effect of a specific problem-posing variant, “inverse modelling”, (i.e. the selection of a real-world situation given a mathematical model), on modelling was investigated. Eighty 11th grade students were randomly divided into two equal-sized subgroups, one first receiving a modelling task and then an inverse-modelling task. The other subgroup received both tasks in reverse order. Results indicated that inverse modelling did not have an overall positive effect on modelling: Only for affine functions with negative slope, accuracy scores for modelling significantly improved after inverse modelling.
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De Bock, D., Veracx, N., Van Dooren, W. (2017). How Students Connect Mathematical Models to Descriptions of Real-World Situations. In: Stillman, G., Blum, W., Kaiser, G. (eds) Mathematical Modelling and Applications. International Perspectives on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematical Modelling. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62968-1_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62968-1_20
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