The role of number words in preschoolers’ addition concepts and problem‐solving procedures

Abstract

Preschoolers' conceptual understanding and procedural skills were examined so as to explore the role of number-words and concept-procedure interactions in their additional knowledge. Eighteen three-to four-year-olds and 24 four-to five-yearolds judged commutativity and associativity principles and solved two-term problems involving number words and unknown numbers. The older preschoolers outperformed younger preschoolers in judging concepts involving unknown numbers and children made more accurate commutativity than associativity judgements. Children with conceptual profiles indicating a strong understanding of concepts applied to unknown numbers were more accurate at solving numberword problems than those with a poor conceptual understanding. The findings suggest that an important mathematical development during the preschool years may be learning to appreciate addition concepts as general principles that apply when exact numbers are unknown.

Developing Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge of Mathematics

“…symbolic fractions into pie charts) and comparing quantities (see Table 1 for more measures). Decide whether ok for puppet to skip some items when counting (Gelman & Meck, 1983) (Kamawar et al, 2010;LeFevre et al, 2006;Muldoon, Lewis, & Berridge, 2007;Rittle-Johnson & Alibali, 1999;Schneider & Stern, 2010;Siegler & Crowley, 1994) b (Canobi et al, 1998) (Canobi, 2005;Canobi & Bethune, 2008;Canobi, Reeve, & Pattison, 2003;Patel & Canobi, 2010;Rittle-Johnson et al, 2001;Schneider et al, 2011) c. Evaluate quality of answers given by others…”

“…An iterative view was not considered in early research on conceptual and procedural knowledge (see Rittle-First, positive correlations between the two types of knowledge have been found in a wide range of ages and domains. The domains include counting (Dowker, 2008;LeFevre et al, 2006), addition and subtraction (Canobi & Bethune, 2008;Canobi et al, 1998;Jordan et al, 2009;Patel & Canobi, 2010), fractions and decimals (Hallett, Nunes, & Bryant, 2010;Hecht, 1998;Hecht, Close, & Santisi, 2003;Reimer & Moyer, 2005), estimation (Dowker, 1998;, and equation solving . In general, the strength of the relation is fairly high.…”

Mathematical Modeling of Natural and Social Context at Preschool Level of Education / Matematičko modeliranje prirodnog i društvenog konteksta u predškolsko doba

“…Children's mental potential necessary for approaching, understanding, modelling and solving certain problems from the natural and social context, was the topic of many studies related to preschool mathematical education (Altun, Dönmez, İnan, Taner, & Özdilek, 2001;Carpenter, Hiebert, & Moser, 1983;Carpenter, Franke, Ansell, Fennema, & Weisbeck, 1993;Davis & Pepper, 1992;Manches, O'Malley, & Benford, 2010;Monroe & Panchyshyn, 2005;Patel & Canobi, 2010;Tarim, 2009). They emphasize the importance of presenting the problems to children from the earliest age as fun challenges which encourage them to be intellectually active, because mental activity, even though periodical in the beginning, is the foundation of permanent cognition activity.…”

Preschool childrens skills in solving mathematical word problems

“…In the related literature, studies about pre-school children's problem solving skills are available (Altun et al, 2001;Carpenter et al, 1983;Carpenter et al, 1993;Davis and Pepper, 1992;Manchesa et al, 2010;Monroe, and Panchyshyn, 2005;Patel and Canobi, 2010;Tarım, 2010;Tarım and Artut, 2005). However; it has been thought that more studies about preschool children skills in problem solving are needed.…”