Effect of "Understand and Solve " Strategy Instruction on Mathematical Problem Solving of Students with Mild Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of "Understand and Solve!" Strategy on change problems including change of a one-step addition and subtraction of children with mild intellectual disabilities and whether they maintained their achievements 3, 5, and 8 weeks after the intervention. Moreover, the effects of the Understand and Solve! Strategy on generalization to different types of problems and multiple step problems as well as on the perception, attitudes, knowledge, use, and control of problem solving strategy were investigated. Three students with intellectual disabilities who were 11 to 12 years old and attended 5th grade participated in the study. "A Multiple Probe Design Across Subjects," which is one of the single subject research designs, was used in the study. The findings of this study showed that Understand and Solve! Strategy was effective in teaching students with mild intellectual disabilities solving change problems including one-step addition and subtraction, they maintained their skills and generalized their skills to different problem types, two-step change problems. As a result of the intervention, students' perception and attitudes towards mathematics as well as knowledge, use and control of strategies to solve mathematical problems positively changed.

Mathematical Problem-Solving Processes of Students with Special Needs: A Cognitive Strategy Instruction Model Solve It

“…The results about the effectiveness of studies examining students with learning disabilities showed that the 'Solve It!' strategy should be implemented on the students with inabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder (Whitby, 2012), intellectual disabilities (Chung & Tam, 2005;Karabulut, 2015;Karabulut & Özmen, 2018), and spina bfida (Coughlin & Montague, 2011) to enable them to improve their problem-solving performance. Stating that the number of students with autism spectrum disorders increased faster than all other disabled groups, Whitby (2012) maintained that there is a need for effective teaching strategies that can be applied to students with autism spectrum disorders and analyzed the effectiveness of the 'Solve It!'…”

“…According to findings, it appears that problem-solving performance of all participants have developed. Recent studies of Karabulut (2015) and Karabulut and Özmen (2018) aimed to examine the effect of the 'Solve It!' strategy on the problem-solving performance of students with mild intellectual disabilities.…”

“…Only limited studies have examined the effects of intervention programs applied to support the problem-solving performance of students with special needs in Turkey (Baki, 2014;Karabulut, 2015;Karabulut & Özmen, 2018;Karabulut, Yıkmış, Özak, & Karabulut, 2015;Kot & Yıkmış, 2018;Özsoy, 2005;Özsoy, 2017;Tuncer, 2009;Tufan & Aykut, 2018). In addition, there are no studies on identifying problem-solving processes of students with special (Özkubat, 2019; Özkubat & Özmen, 2018).…”

“…'Solve It!' contains the elements of cognitive and metacognitive strategy teaching in mathematical problem solving and is a process-based approach used for students with learning disabilities (Daniel, 2003;Krawec, Huang, Montague, Kressler, & De Alba, 2013;Montague, 1984;Montague, 1992;Montague & Bos, 1986;Montague, Enders, & Dietz, 2011;Montague, Krawec, Enders, & Dietz, 2014), intellectual disabilities (Chung & Tam, 2005;Karabulut, 2015;Karabulut & Özmen, 2018), autism spectrum disorders (Whitby, 2012), and for spina bfida (Coughlin & Montague, 2011).…”

A Synthesis of Elementary Mathematics Interventions: Comparisons of Students With Mathematics Difficulty With and Without Comorbid Reading Difficulty

“…We identified MD based on author descriptions of below-average mathematics performance (i.e., a diagnosis of a mathematics learning disability, at-risk status for mathematics learning disability). We did not include studies focused on students with another disability (e.g., emotional and behavior disorders, autism, intellectual disability) experiencing difficulty in mathematics (e.g., Karabulut & Özmen, 2018;Peltier & Vannest, 2018). 2.…”