ABSTRACT
The transition from the elementary word problems discussed in chapter 4 to the multistep problems discussed in chapter 5 was relatively straightforward. Multistep problems can be solved by formulating a plan for combining the elementary schemas found in chapter 4. But the transition from arithmetic word problems to algebra word problems is more complicated. Although I have used algebra word problems in most of my research on problem solving, I have never been very confident that I could distinguish between algebra word problems and other kinds of problems. One reason is that this distinction seems to depend more on the approach used to solve the problem (whether or not the student uses algebra) than on the problem itself. A better distinction therefore is to distinguish among the different methods that students use to solve problems that we might typically classify as algebra word problems.
