Whole number knowledge and number lines help to develop fraction concepts

Abstract

Many researchers have noted that students ’ whole number knowledge can interfere with their efforts to learn fractions. In this paper we discuss a teaching experiment conducted with students in Years 5 and 6 from an eastern suburban school in Melbourne. The focus of the teaching experiment was to use number lines to highlight students ’ understanding of whole numbers then fractions. This research showed that successful students had easily accessible whole number knowledge and recognised the relationship between the whole and the parts whereas the weakest students had poor number knowledge and could not see the connections. Research Background Over the past 20 years research on rational number learning has focused on the development of basic fraction concepts. This has included partitioning of a whole into fractional parts, naming of fractional parts, and order and equivalence (Behr, Wachsmuth, Post, & Lesh, 1984; Kieren, 1983; Streefland, 1984). Kieren (1976) distinguished seven interpretations of rational number that were necessary to enable the learner to acquire sound rational number knowledge, but subsequently (Kieren, 1980; 1988) condensed these