Jiang, RonghuanStar, JonHästö, PeterLi, LijiaLiu, Ru-deTuomela, DimitriJoglar Prieto, NuriaPalkki, RiikkaAbánades, MiguelPejlare, Johanna2024-12-102024-12-102022Jiang, R., Star, J. R., Hästö, P., Li, L., Liu, R.-d., Tuomela, D., Prieto, N. J., Palkki, R., Abánades, M. Á., & Pejlare, J. (2023). Which One Is the “Best”: a Cross-national Comparative Study of Students’ Strategy Evaluation in Equation Solving. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 21(4), 1127-1151. https://doi.org/10.1007/S10763-022-10282-61571-006810.1007/s10763-022-10282-6https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/112292This study was also supported by a grant from the Guangdong Science and Technology Department (2021A1515010936).This cross-national study examined students’ evaluation of strategies for solving linear equations, as well as the extent to which their evaluation criteria were related to their use of strategies and/or aligned with experts’ views about which strategy is the best. A total of 792 middle school and high school students from Sweden, Finland, and Spain participated in the study. Students were asked to solve twelve equations, provide multiple solving strategies for each equation, and select the best strategy among those they produced for each equation. Our results indicate that students’ evaluation of strategies was not strongly related to their initial preferences for using strategies. Instead, many students’ criteria were aligned with the flexibility goals, in that a strategy that takes advantages of task context was more highly valued than a standard algorithm. However, cross-national differences in strategy evaluation indicated that Swedish and Finnish students were more aligned with flexibility goals in terms of their strategy evaluation criteria, while Spanish students tended to consider standard algorithms better than other strategies. We also found that high school students showed more flexibility concerns than middle school students. Different emphases in educational practice and prior knowledge might explain these cross-national differences as well as the findings of developmental changes in students’ evaluation criteria.engAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/journal article1573-1774https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-022-10282-6https://produccioncientifica.ucm.es/documentos/62dc5f45a3beec219592c697https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85130108126&origin=resultslisthttps://www.webofscience.com/wos/alldb/full-record/WOS:000796307000001https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10763-022-10282-6.pdfembargoed access51512512.64451:37.02Strategy evaluationCross-national studyFlexibilityEquation solvingAlgebraEvaluación estratégicaEstudio internacionalFlexibilidadResolver ecuacionesÁlgebraEnseñanza de las Matemáticas12 Matemáticas