The role of context for characterising students' strategies when estimating large numbers of elements on a surface

This paper presents a qualitative study developed with a group of 16-year-old students who were asked to estimate large numbers of elements on a bounded surface. Taking the realistic mathematics education framework as a reference, we presented the students with an activity sequence comprised of four...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Albarracín Gordo, Lluís|||0000-0002-1387-5573, Ferrando, Irene|||0000-0003-3746-4581, Gorgorió Solà, Núria|||0000-0003-3503-9143
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2020
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:298870
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/298870
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Large number estimation
Problem solving
Students'strategies
Context
Tree-like diagram of a problem
Descripción
Sumario:This paper presents a qualitative study developed with a group of 16-year-old students who were asked to estimate large numbers of elements on a bounded surface. Taking the realistic mathematics education framework as a reference, we presented the students with an activity sequence comprised of four different tasks-each one with a different realistic context, which were variations of the same estimation problem. Our data comprises the written reports that the students submitted on completing the tasks. The strategies deployed by the students to solve the tasks consisted in the incardination of procedures related to the concepts of measurement and proportionality. For each task, we present the characterization of the strategies through a visual resource in the form of a tree-like diagram. We integrated the treelike diagrams of the four tasks to generate a tree-like diagram for the general problem. This allowed us to discuss the role of context in the strategies the students reported having used.