Mathematics anxiety hinders students' mathematical achievement already in primary school, but research on its effects beyond whole number knowledge is limited. The main aim of the current study is to examine how state and trait mathematics anxiety relate to performance across five tasks that are relevant for the development of mathematics in…

Self-regulatory efficacy (SRE) among elementary school children is of interest because pupils' self-regulation capacities and SRE influence in managing learning situations. This study investigated variations in the four sources of SRE and how these variations were related to SRE, reading skills and arithmetic skills. The participants were 1284…

Fraction knowledge has been found to predict later mathematical performance, but many students have difficulty with fractions. Virtual manipulatives (VM) and concrete manipulatives (CM) are effective approaches to teaching fractions, but previous research has not been able to reach a consensus on which manipulatives are the most effective. This…

We examined the associations of cognitive skills, math-related emotions and beliefs, and gender with responses to an arithmetic fluency intervention. Elementary school children with dysfluent arithmetic skills (N=69) participated in an arithmetic fluency intervention (with and without self-efficacy support) implemented in small groups in schools…

Difficulties with rational numbers have been explained by a natural number bias, where concepts of natural numbers are inappropriately applied to rational numbers. Overcoming this difficulty may require a radical restructuring of previous knowledge. In order to capture this development, we examined third- to fifth-grade students' understanding of…

This seven-year longitudinal study examined how children's spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON), subitizing based enumeration, and counting skills assessed at five or six years predict their school mathematics achievement at 12 years. The participants were 36 Finnish children without diagnosed neurological disorders. The results, based on…

The purpose of this study is to determine how Finnish pupils' problem-solving skills develop from the 3rd to 5th grade. As research data, we use one non-standard problem from pre- and post-test material from a three-year follow-up study, in the area of Helsinki, Finland. The problems in both tests consisted of four questions related to each other.…