Schema-Based Instruction: Supporting Children with Learning Difficulties and Intellectual Disabilities

Strategies for Solving Addition Problems Using Modified Schema-Based Instruction in Students with Intellectual Disabilities

“…Ref. [2] noted that students with ID benefit from mathematical instructions that feature visual aids and repetition, and that promote flexible strategies focused on a conceptual understanding. In our research, although the three students followed an MSBI approach, each of them required greater emphasis to be placed on some of their steps, as well as some flexibility.…”

“…Many hours of mathematics teaching in the initial stages of education are devoted to solving addition word problems, meaning those that are presented in text form (oral or written) and are solved with one or more addition or subtraction operations. In general, solving these problems requires going through several phases: understanding the situation given in the problem, organizing the quantities, deciding on the appropriate mathematical operation, executing it, and checking the result [1,2]. These phases call for different skills: understanding the terminology, creating a mental representation of the situation, numerical reasoning, and algorithmic knowledge of operations.…”

“…Students with ID have more difficulties extracting the information from the problem and deciding which operation is required to solve it, than with the calculation itself [7]. Because of this, research conducted on students with ID focuses on their understanding of the mathematical relationships given in the problems, and on how they connect them with the right operations [2,6,[8][9][10]. Such is the case of those studies that analyze interventions with schema-based instruction [2,6,8] or conceptual model problem solving [9].…”

“…Because of this, research conducted on students with ID focuses on their understanding of the mathematical relationships given in the problems, and on how they connect them with the right operations [2,6,[8][9][10]. Such is the case of those studies that analyze interventions with schema-based instruction [2,6,8] or conceptual model problem solving [9]. Schema-based instruction (SBI) emphasizes the semantic analysis of problems, and proposes using a visual schema for each problem type (e.g., change, combination, and compare, for addition problems).…”

“…This helps them decide which operation solves the problem [9]. SBI has been used successfully to teach addition problems to students with disabilities [2,8,9,11,12]. Some authors resort to a modified schema-based instruction (MSBI) approach that adds visual supports, task analysis (such as a heuristic in place of a mnemonic) and systematic prompting to traditional SBI.…”