Cross-Country Comparisons of Student Sense Making: The Development of a Mathematics Processing Framework

This paper identifies the strategies Singaporean and Australian students (n = 1,187) employed to solve a 24-item mathematics test. A mathematics-processing framework is proposed, which describes the way primary-aged students successfully process graphic and non-graphic mathematics tasks. There were distinct differences in the way in which the students from the respective countries approached the tasks with the Singaporean students more likely to employ strategies that were explicitly taught and practiced in the classroom, whereas the Australian students tended to employ a more diverse range of approaches.