Understanding the Word problems on Motion

The topic of the thesis was selected based on the long term interests shown by the author in course of her studies. The thesis is a follow up of previous research activities that focused on word problems and the use of experience gathered from them. The whole issue of word problems on motion was selected as the example of typical problems, which children have to face at school, and therefore, they acquire more or less a specific procedure of solving them (as established in prior research). They provide option to draw comparison of their type resemblance and comprehensive variants and of the pupils' capability to implement the acquired procedures when the problem is getting more difficult. This was one of the objectives of the thesis. Another objective was to monitor the specifics of this type of word problems and also the related specific solutions including specific errors the pupils make when solving these types of problems. Furthermore, the objectives include monitoring and analyzing the different pupils' procedures from the qualitative point of view and the efforts to describe their mental representations of the problems and train of thoughts when solving them. The work is divided in two basic parts. The first part is mostly theoretical, containing quotations and theoretical basics excerpted during the..