The Emergence of Young Children's Understanding of the Equal Sign

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Student Reasoning and Understanding in K–12 Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

The proposed presentation reports on grades K–1 children’s understandings about the equal sign prior to and during classroom teaching experiments [CTE] that focus on developing a relational understanding of the equal sign. Findings suggest that children at the beginning of the CTE already held an operational misconception about the equal sign. However, after the CTE, students predominantly employed a relational view of the equal sign to accurately identify equations as true or false or to find missing values in equations with fixed unknowns. This study raises questions as to the origins of children’s misconceptions about the equal sign and whether and how this thinking emerges even in informal settings, prior to formal arithmetic instruction.

Authors

• Maria Blanton, TERC

• Barbara M. Brizuela, Tufts University

• Angela Gardiner, Tahoe Environmental Research Center

• Katherine Sawrey, Tufts University