An ICT environment to assess and support students' mathematical problem-solving performance in non-routine puzzle-like word

This paper reports on a small-scale study on primary school students’ problem-solving performance. In the study, problem solving is understood as solving non-routine puzzlelike word problems. The problems require dealing simultaneously with multiple, interrelated variables. The study employed an ICT environment both as a tool to support students’ learning by offering them opportunities to produce solutions, experiment and reflect on solutions, and as a tool to monitor and assess the students’ problem solving processes. In the study, 24 fourth-graders were involved from two schools in the Netherlands. Half of the students who belonged to the experimental group worked in pairs in the ICT environment. The analysis of the students’ dialogues and actions provided us with a detailed picture of students’ problem solving and revealed some interesting processes, for example, the bouncing effect that means that the students first come with a correct solution and later give again an incorrect solution. The test data collected before and after this “treatment” did not offer us a sufficient basis to draw conclusions about the power of ICT environment to improve the students’ problem-solving performance.