Concreteness Fading: Inverse Relations Between Addition and Subtraction in Korean Elementary Mathematics Textbooks

• In Event: 29.082 - Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: 29.082-23 - Curriculum Innovations and Technology in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Despite the importance of inverse relations between addition and subtraction in elementary mathematics, how students might be supported to learn the relations remains largely unknown. This study explores how the Korean textbooks promote student learning of the relations between addition and subtraction in Grades 1 and 2 by facilitating the transition from concrete to abstract representations. One distinctive feature of the Korean textbooks is that inverse relations are contextualized in real-world situations through the method of storytelling within introductory problems. In addition, the use of multiple visual representations in concrete representations seems to facilitate students’ sense-making of computational procedures in abstract representations.

Authors

• Ji-Won Son, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• SeungJung Jo, University at Buffalo - SUNY