PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
An investigation of the development of partitive meanings for division with fractions: What does it mean to split something into 9/4 groups?
Page: 1499
In this paper we describe a study involving twelve preservice elementary teachers who were attending a community college. The design and implementation of this study were guided by the research question: In what ways do students reason through a sequence of tasks which progressively become more abstract, and which challenge primitive intuitions regarding partitive division? We highlight students’ ways of thinking involved with division that are not easily generalizable, that favor numerical procedures over quantitative reasoning, and which are obstacles to the development of more robust meanings for division.