Understanding and solving verbal arithmetic problems. A holistic view from a sociocultural perspective

Abstract

The article presents the results of a doctoral thesis, which started from the recognition of poor understanding as the main cause of the difficulties that students present in arithmetic problems solving. Consequently, the article's objective is to reflect about the relationship and correspondences between the processes of understanding and word problems solving, from a sociocultural perspective. They used methods such as: documentary analysis, analysis-synthesis and induction-deduction. The main result obtained resides in the systematization of those epistemological postulates that allowed the resignification of word problems as texts and problem solving, as a process of textual comprehension.

Keywords

• comprensión
• problema aritmético verbal
• solución de problemas aritméticos verbales
• didáctica de la matemática.