A Topic Revisited: Students in the Republic of the Maldives Writing Contextual Word Problems

Students dislike for solving word problems is not new for mathematics teachers. Most word problems have no cultural significance or relate to the student. A student dislike for solving word problems could be contributed to the lack of reference to the lived experience of the student (i.e., social class, race, ethnicity, mother language, gender, sexual orientation, and any other demographic characteristics). А study was designed to explore a group of students, on the island of Kuda Hudaa in the Republic of the Maldives, ability to write contextual word problems. Contextual word problems are word problems that relate to a student population in a classroom. The results indicate that all students were able to create contextual word problems for both multiplication and division. Most student written multiplication and division word problems met Marks (1994) three considerations when developing word problems. The intent is to encourage students to write contextual word problems that make learning mathematics more meaningful for students.