BUILDING ON CHILDREN'S INFORMAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE TEACHING OF FRACTIONS

This paper describes a teaching experiment in which children were introduced to fractions using quotient, part-whole or operator situations. Differences between situations are analysed by comparing what children learn about quantities that are represented by fractions in each of these situations, and whether they transfer this learning across situations. The study involved first-graders, aged 6 to 7 years, from Portugal who had not been taught about fractions before. Quantitative analyses showed that children developed a better understanding of equivalence and order of fractional quantities in quotient situations, but there was no transfer of learning to the other two situations. In part-whole and operator situations they only learned how to label fractions and were able to transfer this learning across these two situations.