Abstract

The importance given to the development of the problem solving skill and the requirement to solve problems framed in mathematical or real life contexts, in practice, they are not evidence in relation to the teaching of proportional variations. This qualitative and descriptive study aims to (1) improve the problem solving ability of high school students in Chile, and (ii) elaborate and describe a didactic intervention strategy based on learning situations in proportional variations, focused on solving types of routine problems of various contexts and non-routine problems. For this purpose, participant observation of the process was carried out, in addition to the application of a test of mathematical problems and an opinion questionnaire, to 36 high school students. Through the results, the highest academic performance is evidenced in the routine problems of purely mathematical context, realistic, fantasy context, and nonroutine problems, except in the routine problems of real context and compound proportionality problems. The results highlight the need to consider in the curriculum different types of problems in the teaching of mathematics that relate the discipline to everyday life situations