Curriculum Sequencing and the Acquisition of Clock-Reading Skills Among Chinese and Flemish Children

Abstract

The present study reexamines the adoption of clock reading skills in the primary mathematics curriculum. In many Western countries, the mathematics curriculum adopts a number of agerelated stages for teaching clock reading skills, that were defined by early research (e.g., Friedman & laycock, 1989;Piaget, 1969). Through a comparison of Flemish and Chinese student"s clock reading abilities, the current study examines whether these age-related stages are a solid base for teaching clock reading skills. By means of both quantitative (ANOVA"s) and qualitative (textbook analysis) methods, the present study indicates that the alternative way of teaching clock reading skills in China, i.e., at the age of six instead of staggered out over several grades, results in a two years earlier acquisition of clock reading skills. This indicates that the previously age-related stages in children"s acquisition of clock reading are not universal, nor the most effective way to teach these skills to young children. Clock Reading in the Math Curriculum 3 Does the Present Mathematics Curriculum Effectively Promote the Acquisition of ClockReading? A Comparative Study of Chinese and Flemish Children"s Clock reading Abilities.Primary school teachers report that time measurement is a difficult subject in mathematics education in nearly every grade of primary school (Van Steenbrugge, Valcke, & Desoete, 2010). Being confronted with children"s difficulties in learning to tell the time and at the same time not fully understanding why this task is such a difficult one or how it should be taught, primary school teachers are obviously in need of clear evidence-based strategies for teaching this subject. However, due to a lack of research upon the pedagogy of time, the current adoption of instructional programs and practices for teaching time-related competences such as clock reading, is rather driven by ideology, faddism, politics and marketing than by empirical evidence (Burny, Valcke, & Desoete, 2009;Slavin, 2008).Since research of the pedagogy of time is scarce, Western clock reading instruction builds on dated research that defined age-related stages in children"s development of clock reading skills. These early studies, conducted between the 1970ies and the 1990ies, concluded that children master hour times at the age of six, half hour times at the age of seven, 5-min times at the age of eight or nine and 1-min times at the age of ten (Boulton-Lewis, Wilss, & Mutch, 1997;Case, 1992;Case, Sandieson, & Dennis, 1986;Friedman & Laycock, 1989;Griffin, Case, & Sandieson, 1992;Siegler & McGilly, 1989). However, it should be noted that, aiming at a theoretical insight in children"s natural cognitive development, these studies did not account for the role of instructional processes. In fact, the basic assumption of this early research was that cognitive development can never be the outcome of learning that is invoked by instructional processes (Brainerd, 1978) and children"s assimilation of time conceptions is basically subject to maturation (...

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