Teaching Students With Mild Intellectual Disability to Solve Word Problems Using Schema-Based Instruction

Abstract

This study, which used a multiple baseline across students’ design, examines the effectiveness of a modified schema-based instructional approach to improve the mathematical word problem-solving performance of three students with mild intellectual disability, two of them with autism spectrum disorder. Following the intervention, the three students improved their performance when solving addition and subtraction change word problems; however, their performance was inconsistent with change word problems. The effects of the instruction were generalized to two-step addition and subtraction word problems for the three participants. Moreover, the results were generalized to an untrained setting and were maintained 8 weeks after the instruction. The implications of these findings for teaching problem-solving skills to students with intellectual disability are discussed.

Teaching Cartesian Product Problem Solving to Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Conceptual Model-Based Approach

“…Our results in this regard are particularly promising, since they show that the students were able to transfer what they acquired to new contexts. Moreover, as in the study by Polo-Blanco et al (in press), the three students generalized what they had learned to two-operation problems. In addition, two of them (B and C) retained what they had learned 6 weeks after the last training session.…”

“…Their results align with those of previous works (Barnett & Cleary, 2015; King et al, 2016) and point to the effectiveness of some strategies originally aimed at students with learning disabilities. In particular, Schema-Based Instruction (SBI) (e.g., Rockwell et al, 2011) and Modified Schema-Based Instruction (MSBI) (Cox & Root, 2020, 2021; Polo-Blanco et al, in press) have been successfully implemented with students with ASD to improve verbal mathematics problem-solving skills.…”

Strategies used by students with autism when solving multiplicative problems: an exploratory study

“…In view of the results of this work, the representations of the problem data used in students’ strategies could be incorporated as part of these methodologies, for instance through the use of manipulative material on a schematic diagram in SBI, thus helping them to relate their own representation with the operation to be performed to solve the problem. Other adaptations to the SBI and COMPS methodology have previously been successfully implemented with students with ASD (Root et al , 2017; Cox and Root, 2020; Polo-Blanco et al , 2021b, 2022, García-Moya et al , in press). Furthermore, they can be implemented in a group and also reinforce instruction on 1–1 tuition.…”

“…Because mathematical content is particularly difficult for autistic students (Bullen et al , 2020), the amount of research involving this group has grown in recent years (Gevarter et al , 2016). Most of it focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of instructional methodologies, thus there is little research that focuses on solving problems with a multiplicative structure (Polo-Blanco et al , 2022) and particularly on studying the strategies used by students with autism when solving these problems (Polo-Blanco et al , 2019, 2021b).…”

“…Other authors such as Bae et al (2015) compare the factors involving problem-solving in autistic and TD students. Most of the existing research on students with autism has focused mainly on the additive structure (Rockwell et al , 2011; Polo-Blanco et al , 2021b), with research on the multiplicative structure being much less common (Polo-Blanco et al , 2021).…”