Case studies of children's development of structure in early mathematics

Abstract

Two-year longitudinal case studies of 16 Sydney children extended a study of 103 first graders' use of structure across a range of mathematical tasks. We describe how individual's representations change through five stages of structural development. Children at the pre-structural stage showed inconsistent development presenting disorganised representations and incoherent mathematical ideas. High achievers progressed to a more advanced stage of structural development depicted by an increased level of abstraction.