The Development of Multiplicative Reasoning in the Learning of Mathematics

Download or read book The Development of Multiplicative Reasoning in the Learning of Mathematics written by Guershon Harel and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the most important concepts children develop progressively throughout their mathematics education years are additivity and multiplicativity. Additivity is associated with situations that involve adding, joining, affixing, subtracting, separating and removing. Multiplicativity is associated with situations that involve duplicating, shrinking, stressing, sharing equally, multiplying, dividing, and exponentiating. This book presents multiplicativity in terms of a multiplicative conceptual field (MCF), not as individual concepts. It is presented in terms of interrelations and dependencies within, between, and among multiplicative concepts. The authors share the view that research on the mathematical, cognitive, and instructional aspects of multiplicative concepts must be situated in an MCF framework.