Measure for Measure: What Combining Diverse Measures Reveals About Children's Understanding of the Equal Sign as an Indicator of Mathematical Equality

2012/04/30 by Percival Matthews, Percival G. Matthews, Bethany Rittle-Johnson +4
Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Cognitive and developmental aspects of mathematical skills #Mathematics Education and Teaching Techniques #School Choice and Performance

paper · doi:10.5951/jresematheduc.43.3.0316

openalex publication_date 2012/04/30 · crossref created 2012/04/30 · crossref issued 2012/05/01 · crossref published 2012/05/01 · crossref published-print 2012/05/01 · crossref deposited 2022/01/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Knowledge of the equal sign as an indicator of mathematical equality is foundational to children's mathematical development and serves as a key link between arithmetic and algebra. The current findings reaffirmed a past finding that diverse items can be integrated onto a single scale, revealed the wide variability in children's knowledge of the equal sign assessed by different types of items, and provided empirical evidence for a link between equal-sign knowledge and success on some basic algebra items.

Citations

• Tractatus logico-philosophicus

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