Children's Understanding of the Concepts of Area Measurement

This study examined the effectiveness of an enriched curriculum that connected geometry with area measurement to enhance children's understanding of the concepts of area measurement. One hundred and twenty fourth-grade Taiwanese children from a public school participated in the study. The results reveal that the group who received the enriched curriculum did not outperform the group given the standard area measurement curriculum on the posttest overall, but the enriched curriculum group was superior at explaining their reasoning about area measurement. No gender differences were found in the children's performance at problem solving. The analyses of interviews showed that the children who had a good understanding of the area formula of a rectangle tended to use multiple strategies and the area formulas to determine areas, whereas the children who had a poor understanding of the area formula of a rectangle tended to use the counting strategy to determine areas. The theory and data are interpreted in the context of the issues regarding teaching area measurement for conceptual understanding.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Elementary Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Huang, Hsin-Mei

Contributors dc:contributor

• Klaus G. Witz

• Education, Mathematics

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3337796

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/80057