A textbook constitutes the hegemonic material of the educational institution. It acts as a mediator between the official curriculum and the educational practice. Given its potential influence in the classroom, this study analyzes the treatment of word problems included in the mathematics textbooks published by the publishing houses with the greatest diffusion in Spain at every primary education grade. Three variables were analyzed: their semantic structure, their degree of challenge, and their situational context. The results indicate that most of the problems included in textbooks are characterized by low complexity and variability regarding their semantic structure. They are also characterized by a limited degree of challenge and by being presented in highly standardized situational contexts. Likewise, it is found that there is no evolution in the treatment of these problems with respect to previous studies carried out in the Spanish context. Therefore, it is concluded that the mathematics textbooks currently used in schools are not effective tools to address the process of teaching-learning problem solving.

The teaching guides that complement textbooks have key importance in the assessment of competence in problem solving, because these materials contain the assessment tools that teachers frequently use to quantify the achievements of their students. In this paper, we set two aims: to analyze which curriculum contents are given priority in the assessment tests of the teaching guides; and to check to what extent these tests assess the steps of the mathematical problem solving process. For this, an analysis of the initial and final assessment tests of six Spanish publishers was conducted. The results show that the distribution of mathematical tasks by type of content does not fully conform to the theoretical framework proposed by TIMSS. In addition, only one of the six publishers considered the problem-solving process as evaluable.

Los libros de texto son el tipo de material curricular más empleado en la educación obligatoria. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el tratamiento que reciben los problemas aritméticos verbales de estructura aditiva en estos materiales. Se llevó a cabo una revisión de estudios recientes que analizan la estructura semántica de los problemas en los libros de texto de diferentes sistemas educativos. Se concluye que los libros de texto no constituyen, por sí solos, herramientas eficaces para abordar el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de la resolución de problemas. Además, es necesario tener en cuenta las carencias de estos materiales curriculares y utilizar problemas matemáticos que abarquen todas las estructuras semánticas.