Can teachers identify and overcome content effects in mathematics? A conceptual replication study
Hippolyte GROS, Jean-Pierre THIBAUT, Emmanuel SANDER
Abstract:
Our study aims to conceptually replicate and extend findings from Gros et al. (2019), which explored the impact of real-world semantics interference in expert mathematicians' ability to solve 5th-grade level arithmetic word problems. Unlike the original study, our replication examines the performance of secondary-level mathematics teachers, a group with a different kind of expertise. We aimed to determine if teachers, who often need to translate abstract concepts into concrete examples, are less susceptible to semantic interference due to their specific form of pedagogical expertise. Secondary-level school teachers (N = 122) participated in behavioral experiments involving semantically congruent and incongruent arithmetic word problems. Results showed that what we call "semantic incongruence" significantly increased response times and error rates, both among mathematics teachers and non-mathematics teachers, suggesting that pedagogical experience in itself is not sufficient to recognize semantic incongruence when encoding arithmetic word problems. These findings indicate that teachers, despite their pedagogical expertise, fall into the same traps as mathematicians, demonstrating that semantic incongruence interferes with both Content Knowledge (CK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). We discuss the implications of this replication for educational practices, school psychology, and teacher training and make recommendations to reduce the impact of semantic interference and improve instructional effectiveness.