Research studies are abundant in pointing at how the transition from additive to multiplicative thinking acts as a core challenge for students' understanding of proportionality. This said, we have yet to understand how this transition can be supported, and there remains significant questions to address about how students experience it. Recent work…

Despite curriculum expectations, many students, including a disproportionate number of girls, do not 'just know' (retrieve) single-digit addition facts by Year 3. The current study employed structured interviews to explore which strategies Year 3/4 students (n = 166) used when solving more difficult addition combinations. Results revealed that…

National and state standards in the US have emphasized the importance of solving and posing word problems in students' mathematics learning for decades. Therefore, it is essential for prospective teachers (PTs) to have the mathematical knowledge necessary to teach these skills to their future students. Unfortunately, little research has…

This paper draws on numerous data sources to better understand the shift from additive to multiplicative thinking in years 4 to 9. Research studies that have used the Scaffolding Numeracy in the Middle Years assessment tasks have found that while students can be supported to move through the early and upper zones of the Learning and Assessment…

Students with learning disabilities/difficulties in mathematics often apply ineffective procedures to solve word problems. Given that current mathematics curriculum standards emphasize conceptual understanding in problem solving as well as higher-order thinking and reasoning, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a model-based…

Within the broad area of whole number operations, understanding and solving word problems continues to be an important area of inquiry. In the present study we draw on the framework of representational fluency to examine conceptual and procedural understandings that are exhibited by a group of Malaysian seven-year-olds as they attempted to solve…

We investigated the effects of proximal grouping of numbers, problem-solving goals to make 100, and prior knowledge on students' solution strategies in an online mathematics game. Logistic regression on 857 problem-level data points from 227 middle-school students showed that students were more likely to use productive solution strategies on…

Accurately modeling individual students' knowledge growth is important in many applications of learning analytics. A key step is to decompose the knowledge targeted in the instruction into detailed knowledge components (KCs). We search for an accurate KC model for basic equation solving skills, using data from an intelligent tutoring system (ITS),…

A considerable number of children rely on counting to solve single-digit addition problems when they are expected to use accurate retrieval-based strategies. There are different reasons why this may be so. Children may use inefficient counting strategies, produce errors when applying backup strategies or lack sufficient confidence to just state…

We investigate thirty-three second and fifth-grade students' solution strategies on integer addition problems before and after analyzing contrasting cases with integer addition and participating in a lesson on integers. The students took a pretest, participated in two small group sessions and a short lesson, and took a posttest. Even though the…

Measuring computational fluency, an aspect of procedural fluency, is complex. Many attempts to measure this construct have emphasised accuracy and efficiency at the expense of flexibility and appropriate strategy choice. Efforts to account for these latter constructs through assessing children's computational reasoning using structured interviews…

In this study, we explore thirty-two second graders' performance on integer addition problems before and after analyzing contrasting cases involving integers. The students, as part of a larger study, completed a pretest, were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups, and participated in two small-group sessions, one short whole-class…

This paper explores young children's drawings (6 years old) in early number and addition activities in Malaysia. Observation, informal interviews and analysis of drawings revealed two types of drawing, and gave insight into the transitional process required for children to utilise drawings in problem solving. We argue the importance of valuing and…

In this study we investigated how 200 students in seventh grade (mean age = 12.38 years) solved simple addition problems and if the way they performed simple addition was related to their achievement in mathematics. Four performance groups were identified: proficient, almost proficient, inaccurate min counting and accurate min counting. More than…

In this study, we explore four, second graders' performances on integer addition problems before and after analyzing contrasting cases involving integers. The students, as part of a larger study, participated in a pretest, small group sessions, one short whole-class lesson on integer addition, and a posttest. Based on their integer mental models…