Is Students' Conceptual and Procedural Fraction Knowledge Content Domain-Specific?

• In Event: Understanding Student Knowledge and Task Difficulty in Mathematics

Abstract

Differences in students’ mathematical performance can be attributed to differences in their conceptual and procedural knowledge. Focusing on fractions, previous studies showed that there is a certain individual variability in the acquisition of conceptual and procedural knowledge. This study attempts to extend present research by focusing on three different content domains (i.e., part of the whole, expanding and reducing, and size comparison) that are typically taught independently of each other in mathematics classrooms. We investigated whether we could identify different knowledge profiles within the different content domains by analyzing data of 1005 six-grade students. Our results suggest that the development of conceptual and procedural knowledge of fractions can differ not only between students, but also within students between content domains.

Authors

• Katja Lenz

• Frank Reinhold, Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg

• Gerald Wittmann