Opportunity to learn flexible and adaptive strategy use in current and past Dutch mathematics textbooks

Abstract

Flexible and adaptive strategy use is an important objective of contemporary mathematics education. However, empirical findings show that many students hardly use different strategies in arithmetic. This raises the question what students’ learning opportunities are to acquire strategy flexibility, the use of various strategies, and adaptivity, the use of the optimal strategy for either the task or the individual. Since mathematics textbooks play a pivotal role in shaping students’ learning opportunities, we analyzed four commonly used Dutch primary school mathematics textbooks, as well as their predecessors, focusing on multi-digit number-based subtraction in Grades 2 and 3. First, all lessons in which the teacher manuals provide directions for wholeclass instruction or discussion addressing this topic were identified. Next, in these whole-class moments, we coded which strategies are offered (learning opportunities for flexibility) and whether there are multiple strategies addressed (learning opportunities for adaptivity). Findings show that the learning opportunities for flexible and adaptive strategy use are limited in all textbooks, and even more limited in the current textbooks than in their predecessors. There is ample attention to one universal strategy, but other strategies are offered infrequently. Opportunities to compare and choose between different subtraction strategies are very rare.