Children’s Reasoning While Building Fraction Ideas

This book may be used for research, graduate and undergraduate teacher education, and teacher development. It presents an integrated set of studies of a heterogeneously grouped class of twenty-one nine-year olds, engaged in exploring fraction ideas prior to classroom instruction under conditions that supported investigation, collaboration and argumentation. It demonstrates with text and video narrative how young children can reason about mathematics in surprisingly sophisticated ways when provided the opportunity to do so in the proper classroom environment. In this volume, fourth grade students’ reasoning about fraction concepts is described through careful analysis and accompanying video excerpts showcasing the variety and originality of their thinking. These children will serve as an inspiration for educators to encourage the development of reasoning and argumentation in their students as part of a mathematics curriculum designed to produce critical thinkers.