Detecting psychological obstacles to teaching and learning the topics of ratio and proportion in sixth grade primary pupils

Introduction: The research problem in this paper consists in reviewing the strategies used by the students of sixth grade of primary school when solving simple and direct ratio and propor-tion problems to recognize the cognitive process of the way the students think and so to de-termine how they structure their answers facing problematic situation. Method: In this part the following aspects are described: The place where the study took place was a public primary school in Mexico city, the subjects that we work with were 29 students studying the sixth grade of primary school, and the methodological instruments used, those were: The direct observation in the classroom, the indirect observation through informal talking with the teacher and the students, also as checking their text books, the design, valida-tion, through tests and application of a exploratory questionnaire. Results: In this section are shown the results that were gotten from the questionnaire and the kind of strategies used in each task then a comparison is made with some of the investigations that are mentioned in the introduction part. Discussion or Conclusion: An strong charge over the algorithms was observed, but with out a meaning. The teaching has not explore at all the qualitative thinking of the students around proportionality, that was observed when they focus in one of the figures dimensions they were asked to reduce or amplify