What is it about?
Although instruction in fractions starts earlier in elementary school, understanding of decimals becomes accurate sooner, improves more rapidly, and remains greater even at the end of high school.
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Why is it important?
We examined knowledge of fractions and decimals from elementary school to the end of high school and found that although learning of fractions and decimals is related, learning decimals is easier. This suggests that children might benefit from teaching decimals first and using that understanding to help children understand fractions.
Perspectives
Writing is a learning process; in scientific writing, we learn from the data and from sharing perspectives with our collaborators. Our goal has been to convey what we learned to everyone interested in how children do, or don’t, learn mathematics.
Yunqi Wang
Zhejiang University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Developmental trajectories of numerical magnitude representations of fractions and decimals., Developmental Psychology, March 2023, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/dev0001547.
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