Relations Between Quantitative Reasoning and Word Problem-Solving: a study on the strategies of a 3^rd and 4^th graders group

Research shows that quantitative reasoning is a necessary skill for solving word problems. There is evidence that quantitative reasoning is related to the quality of the strategy used to solve word problems. Thus, this study aimed to analyze the relations between quantitative reasoning and word problem solving. Reading comprehension was also considered, due to its need to interpret the questions. With this, three distinct tasks were performed to assess the proposed skills: quantitative reasoning (QR), a reading comprehension task (RCT), and a word problem (WP). After verifying the correlation between the skills evaluated, a qualitative analysis was carried out on the strategies used to solve the word problem task. To this end, the sample was divided into four categories based on performance equal to or greater than 50%, or less than 50% in the tasks of QR and WP: 1) superior performance in both tasks; 2) superior performance in QR and inferior in WP; 3) inferior performance in QR and superior in WP; and 4) poor performance in both tasks. The sample was composed by 127 students of 3rd and 4th grades of elementary school from two public schools in Porto Alegre - Rio Grande do Sul. From the results, there was a significant relation between quantitative reasoning and word problem-solving, as well as, from the qualitative analysis it was found that the most efficient strategies occurred more frequently among students who had superior performance in both tasks.

Keywords:
Word Problem Solving; Quantitative Reasoning; Word Problem-Solving Strategies