May 2012, Vol. 43, Issue 3
Measure for Measure: What Combining Diverse Measures Reveals About Children’s Understanding of the Equal Sign as an Indicator of Mathematical Equality
Percival Matthews, Bethany Rittle-Johnson, Katherine McEldoon, and Roger Taylor
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.
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