There are several other modelling cycles that can also be used to describe students’
activities while solving modelling problems (e.g.,Galbraith & Stillman, 2006; Pollak, 1979; Verschaffel et al., 2000). One characteristic advantage of the seven-step modelling cycle is the separation between constructing a situation model, a real model and a mathematical model. This allows for distinguishing between difficulties in understanding the given situation, in simplifying and structuring the information extracted from the situation, and in choosing a suitable mathematical description of the situation during students’ solution processes, and thus helps teachers in choosing appropriate, well-aimed and adaptive interventions especially in the critical translation phase at the beginning of the modelling process. Generally speaking, the seven-step cycle described above is both sufficiently detailed to capture the essential cognitive activities taking place in actual modelling processes and sufficiently simple to guide the necessary observations and analyses in a parsimonious way.