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The conception of substitution of the equals sign plays a unique role in students' algebra performance
journal contribution
posted on 2018-07-03, 13:27 authored by Emine Simsek, Iro Xenidou-DervouIro Xenidou-Dervou, Ilyas Karadeniz, Ian JonesIan JonesStudents’ conceptions of the equals sign are related to algebraic success. Research has
identified two common conceptions held by children: operational and relational. The latter
has been widely operationalised in terms of the sameness of the values on each side of the
equals sign, but Jones, Inglis, Gilmore and Dowens (2012) argued that the substitution component of relational equivalence should also be operationalised. In this study, we
investigated whether students’ endorsement of the substitution definition of the equals sign is
a unique predictor of their algebra performance independent of the other two definitions
(operational and sameness). Secondary school students were asked to rate the ‘cleverness’
of operational, sameness, and substitution definitions of the equals sign and completed an
algebra test. Our findings demonstrate that endorsement of substitution plays a unique role
in explaining secondary school students’ algebra performance above and beyond school year and the other definitions. These findings contribute new insights into how students’ algebra learning relates to their conceptions of the equals sign.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematical Sciences
Published in
Journal of Numerical CognitionCitation
SIMSEK, E. ... et al, 2019. The conception of substitution of the equals sign plays a unique role in students' algebra performance. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 5 (1), pp.24-37.Publisher
The Mathematical Cognition and Learning SocietyVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-06-18Publication date
2019-04-05Notes
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.ISSN
2363-8761Publisher version
Language
- en