Prevailing educational practices for area measurement and students' failure in measuring areas [An article from: Journal of Mathematical Behavior]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Mathematical Behavior, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The present research was carried out with the participation of 106 students in their last grade in Elementary School and revealed certain problems that these students faced in understanding the concept of area measurement. The students in the sample persisted on using measurement strategies that often led to failure. Our research plan comprises a comparison between the strategies for area measurement strategies used by two groups: the experimental group (E.G.) and the control group (C.G.). The experimental group attended a special teaching course, which stressed the conceptual characteristics of the area measurement process. The present research aims at revealing the students' understanding, strategies, and misconceptions regarding area measurement. In addition to that, we examine whether the special teaching course and the use of different measurement tools may lead the two research groups to adopt different measurement strategies.