Abstract
The scientific debate on factors of success in school problem solving is still running. One of the explored points is a connection between school problems and real-life problems.
The study examines whether the experience with some real-life domains helps during the solving of school problems referring to the same issue. The study follows the basic question: What is the connection between the school mathematical word problems and the real-life experience? The connection can work in two ways - motivational and cognitive.
It means that pupils are motivated to solve school problems which resemble their life experience. The experience also helps to find the best calculation procedure and check the results.
The sample of our study consisted of 1, 383 pupils of six grades at the Czech grammar schools. The data were collected via questionnaire on life experience and didactic test including mathematical word problems.
The analysis shows that students differed in the degree of subjective proficiency in individual real-life domains and the proficiency in real-life domains positively correlates with the success in solving of word problems. However, the correlation does not exist in all age groups.