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This research addressed Hungarian pre-service and in-service (both elementary and lower secondary) teachers' pedagogical content knowledge concerning the teaching of word problem solving strategies. By means of a standardized interview protocol, participants (N = 30) were asked about their judgement on the difficulty of teaching word problems, the factors they find difficult, and their current teaching practice. Furthermore, based on a comparative analysis of Eastern European textbooks, we tested how teachers' current beliefs and views relate to the word problem solving algorithm described in elementary textbooks. The results suggest that in the teachers' opinion, explicit teaching of a step-by-step algorithm is feasible and desirable as early as in the 1st school grade. According to our results, two approaches (namely, paradigmatic-and narrative-oriented) concerning how to teach the process of word problems solving, originally revealed by Chapman, were found. Furthermore, teachers in general agreed with the approach taken in the textbooks on the subject of what kinds of word problems should be used, and that explicit teaching of word problem solving strategies should be introduced by using simple, routine word problems as examples.

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". Strategies and performance in elementary students' three-digit mental addition Csaba Csíkos 1

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Mathematical word problems used in Verschaffel et al.'s (Learning and Instruction 7:339-359, 1994) study were applied in several follow-up studies. The goal of the present study was to replicate and extend the results of this line of research in a large sample of Hungarian students using an alternative set of data-gathering and dataanalysis techniques. 4,037 students forming a nationwide representative sample of the Hungarian fifth-grade student population (aged 10-11) completed the test. The test contained five word problems from the list of 10 P('problematic)-items from Verschaffel et al.'s test. In contrast to all previous research in this domain, we used a multiplechoice format, where three options were given for each task: (a) routine-based, non-realistic answer, (b) numerical response that does take into account realistic considerations, (c) a realistic solution stating that the task cannot be solved. The hypotheses of this study were: (1) Students' responses will confirm previous results, i.e. upper elementary school students prefer to respond to P-items by means of the routine-based answer; (2) Most students will demonstrate a more or less consistent preference for a given answer type (a, b or c) over problems; (3) Students' school math marks will have low correlation indices with students' achievement on these word problems. Our results confirm student's overall tendency to follow non-realistic approaches when doing school word problem solving. The tendency even holds when confronting students with various kinds of realistic answers. Our results show that students demonstrate response patterns over problems, and that the correlation with math school performance is significant but small.

Tartalmi keretek a kutatásalapú tanulás tudáselemeinek értékeléséhez a természettudományokban Walker, 2007), azaz a megoldás elérhető a tanulócsoport számára, de nincs közvet-len algoritmus vagy recept a megtalálására. -A tanulók egymással párbeszédet folytatnak az alkalmazott módszerekről.-A tanulók elemzik a bizonyítékokat, következtetéseket vonnak le, és bemutatják eredményeiket.A kutatásalapú tanulás tudáselemeinek értékelése elsősorban a tanulási folyamat során fejlődő és fejleszthető tudáselemekre vonatkozik. Ugyanakkor érdemes a folyamat mellett a kutatásalapú tanulás termékeként, eredményeként előálló tudáselemek értékelésére is kitérni.

Background: Vocational education teachers are key participants in the renewal of the Hungarian vocational educational system. Their professional development (as indicated by their learning activities, learning targets and information sources) contains both the input for improving their teaching and the findings essential for affecting future improvements. The aim of this questionnaire survey was to explore Hungarian vocational education teachers' views and judgements on three interrelated phenomena: their learning activities, their opinion regarding the importance of pedagogical knowledge and the efficiency and usage of information sources relevant to their professional development. Methods: A total of 1131 teachers from 37, randomly selected vocational education schools completed a questionnaire based on five subscales, each containing five-point Likert-scales: (1) teachers' learning activities, (2) judgment of their preparedness in pedagogical knowledge, (3) judgment on the importance of their pedagogical knowledge components, and (4) the efficiency and (5) usage of information sources in furthering their professional development. Results: All subscales display appropriate reliability (Cronbach's alpha ranged from .65 to .94). The study provides the descriptive statistical values for each questionnaire item, the relationships between subscales and the connections between the subscales and background variables, such as gender, career level and school type. Conclusion: This explorative study possesses theoretical relevance in developing a questionnaire that consists of five reliable subscales, all of which can later be used for either detecting changes in teachers' views or measuring the effectiveness of intervention programs and professional development training sessions designed for vocational education teachers. The study's practical relevance lies in its explorative nature: decision makers are provided with ample evidence indicating the potential advantages and obstacles vocational education teachers face in their attempt to work more efficiently.

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