Examining 4th Grade Gifted and Non-Gifted Students Understanding Levels of Place Value

Abstract

The aim of this research is to reveal the understanding of dimensions and sub-dimensions of the place value in natural numbers of gifted and non-gifted students attending fourth grade. A mixed approach was adopted in the research. The research is quantitative in terms of revealing the levels of place value, counting, representing, naming, renaming, comparing and calculating the dimensions of the students and comparing the general mean score of both groups with the mean score for each dimension, and it is qualitative in terms of revealing the mistakes made in these dimensions. The study group of the research consists of 76 students diagnosed as gifted who attend four different SACs and 90 non-gifted fourth grade students attending in a regular school in town in the Central Anatolia Region. According to the findings obtained in the research, it was revealed that students with a diagnosis of giftedness could not reach the desired learning level in the count by 10 forward sub-dimension of the counting dimension of the place value. It was also revealed that they could not reach the desired learning level in the non-standard representation sub-dimension of the representation dimension. On the other hand the non-gifted students could not reach the desired learning level also in the division sub-dimension of the calculation dimension. It was concluded that students that are diagnosed as gifted had high success in terms of understanding the place value of natural numbers. For both groups of students, it can be said that they have difficulties in operations with non-standard representations, and they have difficulty in thinking differently because they are used to doing the questions by memorization and rules. Experimental studies can be carried out on the dimensions of the place value.