This study focused on capturing the research landscape of past studies related to mathematics problem solving in elementary education from 1969 to 2021 through a bibliometric analysis. All the 159 bibliographic data involved were extracted from the Scopus database. The findings show an increasing trend in publication and citation over the years. The publications were distributed over six continents, namely North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, and Africa. The United States emerged as the most productive country with the highest number of publications, g-index, and h-index. The foci of the research are (i) problem solving involving arithmetic and mathematical representations, (ii) mathematics teaching and learning based on word problems, (iii) cognition of pupils and affective domains in mathematics problem solving, and (iv) problem solving involving algebra and teachers' role in problem solving learning. The findings of this study serve as a guideline for researchers to understand the niche area and set forth pathways for future research.

The cultural diversity of Malaysia gives a way to three types of public primary schools which vary in terms of cultural and medium of instruction. This study aimed to explore the difference between the performance of grade four primary students from the rural region of Malaysia in solving word problems involving measurement formula and higher order thinking skills. The sample of the study consisted of a total of 107 students from the three types of schools, namely National Primary School, Chinese National-Type Primary School and Tamil National-Type Primary School located in the rural region of Penang, Malaysia. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the performance of the students from the three types of schools. However, most of the students performed below the minimum proficiency level. The findings of the study suggest that the teaching approach should be shifted to be more focused on problem-solving skills and more educational intervention for promoting students' problem-solving ability of the students should be designed and implemented in the three types of schools.

The achievement gaps existed among the three types of Malaysian elementary schools with different instruction mediums. Thus, this study sought to compare the types of errors made by the low-performing students from different school types in solving word problems involving higher-order thinking skills by conducting a multiple case study. The study involved 18 low-performing students from a National Primary School (NPS), National-Type Chinese Primary School (NTCPS), and National-Type Tamil Primary School (NTTPS) in Malaysia. The students’ errors in solving eight word problems were identified qualitatively through conducting four sessions of diagnostic interviews, followed by the Newman’s Error Analysis. Then, a cross-case analysis was conducted. The findings indicated that the participants of the three school types made reading, comprehension, transformation, process skills and encoding errors. However, the NPS and NTTPS low-performing students made more process skills errors and encoding errors, as compared to the NTCPS low-performing students. The findings imply the need to enhance the procedural fluency of NPS and NTTPS low-performing students for reducing the achievement gaps among the school types.

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