Open-ended tasks were used to examine gender differences in complex mathematical problem solving. The results of this study suggest that, overall, males perform better than females, but the gender differences vary from task to task. A qualitative analysis of student responses to those tasks with gender differences showed that male and female…

This document is 7th in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education monograph series. The mathematical performance of (n=250) U.S. 6th-grade students from both private and public schools and (n=425) Chinese 6th-graders from both key and common schools was examined on multiple-choice tasks assessing computation and simple problem solving, and…

Only 25% of fifth- and sixth-grade Chinese students (n=186) correctly solved a division-with-remainder computation task, about the same success rate as with American students, and only one-sixth of the students could interpret the result. (MKR)

The contributions of open-ended tasks in examining students' mathematical performance were studied with 250 U.S. and 425 Chinese sixth graders. Open-ended tasks allow for analysis of student performance that cannot be assessed solely by percent correct or incorrect, but they pose many problems, such as those of translation. (SLD)

Two studies are reported that explore the effectiveness of instruction in promoting students' conceptual understanding of the average concept using a leveling model and an open-ended problem-solving approach. One teacher and her 46 sixth-grade students participated in the first study. One year later, the second study was conducted with the same…