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Developing children's conceptual understanding of area measurement: A curriculum and teaching experiment
ARTICLE

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Learning and Instruction Volume 21, Number 1, ISSN 0959-4752 Publisher: Elsevier Ltd

Abstract

The present study examined the effectiveness of three instructional treatments which had different combinations of mathematical elements regarding 2-dimensional (2-D) geometry and area measurement for developing 4th-grade children's understanding of the formulas for area measurement and their ability to solve area measurement problems. Participants were 120 fourth graders. The results showed that the enriched curriculum, involving the geometry motions and area measurement connections effectively facilitated children's mathematical judgments and explanations demanding high-level conceptual understanding. The instructional curricula accentuating only 2-D geometry or numerical calculations for area measurement did not exhibit such effectiveness. Interview data revealed that the geometric operations of superimposition, decomposition, re-composition as well as the concept of congruence were deemed essential by children for the conceptualization of the formulas for area measurement.

Citation

Huang, H.M.E. & Witz, K.G. (2011). Developing children's conceptual understanding of area measurement: A curriculum and teaching experiment. Learning and Instruction, 21(1), 1-13. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from .

This record was imported from Learning and Instruction on January 29, 2019. Learning and Instruction is a publication of Elsevier.

Full text is availabe on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.09.002

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