ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first of three chapters that focus specifically on problem structures that influence the difficulty of ratio and proportion problems and the strategies that students use to solve them. Problem structures refer to how various features of a problem are organized and interact with each other. Students’ flexibility when solving ratio and proportion problems can be increased by varying the structures in problems. This facilitates students’ conscious analysis of the relationships and quantities in the problem situations. Teacher knowledge of problem structures can impact their ability to intentionally and meaningfully select and/or design formative assessment problems.
