Investigating young children’s learning of mass measurement

Young Children's Emerging Understandings of the Measurement of mass

“…The first two authors were members of the original research team who designed and used this framework to inform the clinical assessment tasks and lessons in the present study. The ENRP findings indicated that for young children, rich experiences involving measuring mass are needed (Cheeseman et al, 2011). In the present study we provided such experiences, listened to and observed the children, and gained insights into their understandings and thinking Young children's emerging understandings of the measurement of mass about the attribute of mass and what it is to compare, order, quantify and measure masses.…”

“…It is described as design research (Cobb, Confrey, DiSessa, Lehrer & Schauble, 2003) as it involved a classroom experiment in which the research team collaborated with a teacher who took responsibility for instruction and who was also a member of the research team. There were three phases in the study: the administration of individual one-to-one, task-based assessment interviews (see Cheeseman et al, 2011) to collect baseline data on children's understandings of mass measurement; the teaching phase of five lessons (three weeks after the initial interviews); and another set of one-to-one interviews for further assessment of children's learning (three weeks after the teaching). A detailed discussion of the data collection and results from the task-based assessment interviews can be found in Cheeseman et al (2012).…”

“…In this article we build on previous research (Cheeseman, McDonough & Clarke, 2011) in the Early Numeracy Research Project (ENRP). Within the ENRP, a framework of conceptual milestones or 'growth points' was developed for mass measurement (Clarke et al, 2002), matching the growth points developed for length measurement (McDonough & Sullivan, 2011).…”

Using drawings and discussion to gain insights into young learners’ understanding of mass

“…Research specifically on learning about the measurement of mass continues to be minimal even though mass is an element of the measurement curriculum in the primary school years (e.g., Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012). However, the limited research does provide insights, including findings showing that children encounter ideas of mass in their play from as early as 12 months (Lee, 2012), show awareness of the attribute in the first year of school (Cheeseman, McDonough, & Clarke, 2011;MacDonald, 2010), and can order objects by weight at 5-years (Brainerd, 1974). More recent research on the measurement of mass has …”

“…We explore the use of student recording through drawing and/or writing (the Impress Me task, described in detail below), and follow-up discussion in an attempt to gain insights into young learners' understanding of mass measurement. We build on our experiences from previous research employing drawing and description (McDonough, 2002), and research on young children's learning of mass measurement (e.g., McDonough, Cheeseman, & Ferguson, 2013;Cheeseman, McDonough, & Ferguson, 2014), some of which involved children drawing to show understanding of mass measurement .…”