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Understanding arithmetic concepts: the role of domain-specific and domain-general skills

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posted on 2018-09-21, 12:19 authored by Camilla GilmoreCamilla Gilmore, Sarah Clayton, Lucy Cragg, Clare McKeaveney, Victoria Simms, Samantha Johnson
A large body of research has identified cognitive skills associated with overall mathematics achievement, focusing primarily on identifying associates of procedural skills. Conceptual understanding, however, has received less attention, despite its importance for the development of mathematics proficiency. Consequently, we know little about the quantitative and domain-general skills associated with conceptual understanding. Here we investigated 8 – 10-year-old children’s conceptual understanding of arithmetic, as well as a wide range of basic quantitative skills, numerical representations and domain-general skills. We found that conceptual understanding was most strongly associated with performance on a number line task. This relationship was not explained by the use of particular strategies on the number line task, and may instead reflect children’s knowledge of the structure of the number system. Understanding the skills involved in conceptual learning is important to support efforts by educators to improve children’s conceptual understanding of mathematics.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Mathematics Education Centre

Published in

PLoS ONE

Citation

GILMORE, C.K. ... et al., 2018. Understanding arithmetic concepts: the role of domain-specific and domain-general skills. PLoS ONE, 13(9): e0201724.

Publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

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  • VoR (Version of Record)

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© The authors

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-09-12

Publication date

2018-09-25

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by PLoS under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

ISSN

1932-6203

Language

  • en

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