Background: Recent research showed that cross-notation magnitude knowledge of fractions and decimals was related to better performance in fraction arithmetic, but it remains unclear whether it made an independent contribution to fraction arithmetic longitudinally when other cognitive variables are considered. Aims: To examine the extent to which…

Solving arithmetic word problems has been a challenge for primary students due to difficulties in understanding the problem structure and relating the quantities in the problem to each other. This paper reports on an action research study to enhance students' subtraction word problem-solving skills. The authors observed that their students had…

Urban and rural children have different levels of performance in arithmetic processing. This study investigated whether such a residence difference can be explained by phonological processing. A total of 1,501 Chinese primary school students from urban and rural areas were recruited to complete nine cognitive tasks: two in arithmetic performance…

Presents an issue that arises in every country: How can teachers best help children master basic addition and subtraction facts? Discusses how this is handled in China and highlights the impact that language has on how children think about numbers. (KHR)

The grade placement of topics in addition and subtraction was compared across the five countries through analysis of textbooks. "Remarkable" uniformity in grade placement was noted for Japan, China, the Soviet Union, and Taiwan, but the United States differed substantially. (MNS)

Cross-cultural studies on mathematical cognition and education have suggested that curriculum and teaching have contributed to U.S. versus Asian differences in student performance; however, previous discussions of curriculum and teaching practices have been very general and have not focused on a detailed analysis of how mathematics concepts are…