The decomposition of numbers when solving subtraction tasks is regarded as more powerful than counting-based strategies. Still, many students fail to solve subtraction tasks despite using decomposition. To shed light upon this issue, we take a variation theoretical perspective (Marton, 2015) seeing learning as a function of discerning critical…

Students' understanding of negative integers is an important aspect of learning mathematics as it is a requirement for learning broader mathematical concepts. The purpose of this research is to explore students' initial perceptions in understanding negative integers on a number line. This descriptive exploratory qualitative research was conducted…

Children's early accuracy on place value (PV) tasks longitudinally predicts their later multidigit calculation skills. However, another window into children's emerging base-ten concepts is the pattern of errors -- "smart errors" -- they exhibit on these measures. Past research has speculated that these smart errors -- similar to invented…

The purpose of this research was to develop and evaluate a number sense-based curriculum aiming to eliminate student errors due to mathematical misconceptions. A mixed method research model as one of the qualitative research approaches was adopted in this study aiming to develop a number sense-based instructional design to eliminate student errors…

A study of pre-service primary school teachers' content knowledge regarding real numbers related to infinity, i.e., division by zero and denseness of the real number line, was conducted at a Swedish university. Data were collected twice during the respondents' teacher education using questionnaires and interviews on both occasions. The data were…

This study aimed to reveal the common errors in fractions, the associated thinking strategies among 5th graders, and the persistence of these errors. A quantitative method was applied in this study through calculating the percentages of every type of error the students made in the diagnostic test, The qualitative part was performed through…

One of the attributes of rational numbers that make them different from integers are the different symbolic modes (fraction, decimal and percentage) to which an identical number can be attributed (e.g. 1/4, 0.25 and 25%). Some research has identified students' difficulty in mental calculations with rational numbers as has also the switching to…

The metaphor of the mental number line accounts for numerous empirical effects of spatial-numerical associations. In the present study, we aimed at investigating directional spatial-numerical associations reflected by SNARC-like digit-direction and sign-direction congruency effects as well as the sign-digit compatibility effect when 6th graders…

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to investigate U.S. preschool teachers' math teaching knowledge in a specific content domain: counting and numbers. One hundred in-service and pre-service teachers participated in the study; they completed a questionnaire that is composed of learning scenarios and scenario-based math teaching questions.…

Interventions to support children with mathematical learning difficulties typically address deficits in domain-specific knowledge. However, not all students benefit from these instructional programs. In this case, some authors suggest an even more intensive instructional program combined with other factors assumed to be relevant for learning.…

Background: Poor mathematics performance in South Africa is well known. The COVID-19 pandemic was expected to exacerbate the situation. Aim: To investigate Grade 7 learners' mathematical knowledge at the end of primary school and to compare mathematical performance of Grade 7 and 8 learners in the context of the pandemic. Setting: Data were…

Researchers collaborated with a team of third-grade teachers in an urban district in the Upper Midwest to examine misunderstandings among students when using the number line as a model for fractions. Researchers looked closely at how the number line can be used as a model to build meaning for fractions for third-grade students. This article…

This study aims to identify errors made by primary school students when modelling word problems and to eliminate those errors through scaffolding. A 10-question problem-solving achievement test was used in the research. The qualitative and quantitative designs were utilized together. The study group of the quantitative design comprises 248…

Learning Disabilities in Mathematics (LDM) or dyscalculia are a frequent and disruptive problem within schools. Nevertheless, this problem has received little attention from researchers and practitioners, if compared with the number of studies published on disabilities in reading. Therefore, teachers do not have enough guidance to help children…

In this study we set out to investigate the errors made by students in logarithms. A test with 16 items was administered to 89 Secondary three students (Year 9). The errors made by the students were categorized using four categories from a framework by Movshovitz-Hadar, Zaslavsky, and Inbar (1987). It was found that students in the top third were…