Abstract
Having an adequate knowledge and skill in mathematics at early grade level is basic for children in their daily life activities and future life successes. Assessing procedural and conceptual knowledge of children can help us to check whether they are getting the required knowledge and skill at the respective grade level because learning mathematics involves both conceptual and procedural knowledge ( JICA, 2012 ). Number pattern is one of the fundamental skill in numeracy that early grade children have to learn and their performance in strategic and effective counting is basic for their future success in arithmetic ( Gersten, Clarke, Haymond, & Jordan, 2011 ). This study examined early grade children procedural and conceptual knowledge level in number pattern, and the association between children’s procedural and conceptual knowledge. The subjects of this study were 24 grade 2 & 3 students in Halaba Kulito primary School at Halaba Zone. The results of this study revealed that early grade children procedural knowledge is average (56.7%) and their conceptual knowledge level is poor (44.4%), and females’ knowledge in both concept and procedure is lower than their male counterpart, 44.2 vs 69.2 & 34.72 vs 55.56. In addition, the finding underlined the significant association between procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge, and children who score higher in conceptual knowledge items had superior score in procedural knowledge items than the converse. Considering these results as a base line, further studies are required, especially, on quality of early grade mathematics curriculum and its implementation, and the contributing factors of children low performance in learning mathematics, with special focus on female students at early grade levels. Keywords : Procedural knowledge, Conceptual Knowledge, Mathematics, Number pattern, Performance DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-12-01 Publication date: December 31 st 2020
Highlights
Having an adequate knowledge and skills in mathematics at early grades is basic for children in their daily life activities and is a basic foundation for their future mathematics learning
The finding showed that early grade children procedural knowledge is average and their conceptual knowledge is poor, especially, in determining relative position of numbers
Children procedural knowledge level is better than their conceptual knowledge level, they did not perform well in the items that need high cognitive demand
Summary
Having an adequate knowledge and skills in mathematics at early grades is basic for children in their daily life activities and is a basic foundation for their future mathematics learning. Number pattern is one of the fundamental skills in numeracy that early grade children need to learn (Gersten et al, 2011; LM, L, Aarnout, & Yasmin, 2014; Siegler & Robinson, 1982) because it helps them to learn later concepts in mathematics like; multiplying numbers (Geary, 1994), thinking algebraically (Sarama & Clements, 2009), and it lays a base for advanced mathematical thinking (Gersten et al, 2011) It is the process of finding regularities and structure, and arranging orders of numbers in correct and acceptable way (Sarama & Clements, 2009). Measuring Children Proficiency in Number Pattern Many tools of measuring early grade children focus on getting the correct answer for the given item, they focus on general performance of children in the specific area of mathematics These measures hardly show the level of children conceptual and procedural knowledge. It tried to explore the association between conceptual and procedural knowledge in number pattern
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