Equation structure and the meaning of the equal sign: The impact of task selection in eliciting elementary students' understandings

Date

2013-06-01

Author

Stephens, Ana C.
Knuth, Eric J.
Blanton, Maria L.
İşler Baykal, Işıl
Gardiner, Angela Murphy
Marum, Tim

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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This paper reports results from a written assessment given to 290 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students prior to any instructional intervention. We share and discuss students' responses to items addressing their understanding of equation structure and the meaning of the equal sign. We found that many students held an operational conception of the equal sign and had difficulty recognizing underlying structure in arithmetic equations. Some students, however, were able to recognize underlying structure on particular tasks. Our findings can inform early algebra efforts by highlighting the prevalence of the operational view and by identifying tasks that have the potential to help students begin to think about equations in a structural way at the very beginning of their early algebra experiences.

Subject Keywords

Applied Psychology, Applied Mathematics, Education

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/57157

Journal

JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL BEHAVIOR

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2013.02.001

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article

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Citation Formats

A. C. Stephens, E. J. Knuth, M. L. Blanton, I. İşler Baykal, A. M. Gardiner, and T. Marum, “Equation structure and the meaning of the equal sign: The impact of task selection in eliciting elementary students’ understandings,” JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICAL BEHAVIOR, pp. 173–182, 2013, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/57157.