| Statements from Research on Teaching Decimals | ||||
| (1) As with fractions
an understanding of the symbolism for representing decimals is essential to developing understanding of operations with decimals. Resnick Lauren B. Pearla Nesher Francois Leonard Maria Magone Susan Omanson and Irit Peled. "Conceptual Bases of Arithmetic Errors: The Case of Decimal Fractions." Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 20 (January 1989): 8-27. (2) Students who do not understand decimal notation frequently resort to memorizing procedural rules. Bell
Alan
Malcolm Swan
and G. Taylor. "Choice of Operation in Verbal Problems with Decimal Numbers." Educational Studies in Mathematics 12 (November 1981): 399-420. (3) Several research studies have found that students have trouble solving problems involving percents. (4) One reason percents may be difficult is concise linguistic form which leads students to manipulate numbers based on learned procedures rather than on underlying relationships. Parker
Melanie
and Gaea Leinhardt. "Percent: A Privileged Proportion." Review of Educational Research 65 (Winter 1995): 421-81. Resnick
Lauren B.
Pearla Nesher
Francois Leonard
Maria Magone
Susan Omanson
and Irit Peled. "Conceptual Bases of Arithmetic Errors: The Case of Decimal Fractions." Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 20 (January 1989): 8-27. (6) Research has shown that most middle-grades children were unsuccessful with a set of tasks that mixed fraction and decimal notation. Markovitz
Zvia
and Judith Sowder. "Students Understanding of the Relationship Between Fractions and Decimals." Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics 13 (January 1991): 3-11. (7) The 7th national mathematics assessment found that students performed better on questions that were accompanied by manipulatives than on items that asked them to outline figures on a grid. Martin W. Gary and Marilyn E. Strutchens. "Geometry and Measurement". In Results from the Seventh Mathematics Assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress edited by Edward A. Silver and Patricia Ann Kenney pp. 193-234. Reston VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics |
||||