Relating Students’ Early Algebraic Thinking to Mathematics Curriculum Materials

Abstract

This study investigated the trends in algebraic thinking of Korean elementary school students through the students’ correct answer rates for the early algebra-related items in the 4th-grade assessment of TIMSS 2011, TIMSS 2015, and TIMSS 2019, and explored these trends in relation to the changes in early algebra-related content in the Korean mathematics curriculum and textbooks. As a result of the study, with regards to finding unknowns or unknown operations and representing problem situations as expressions, the correct answer rates of the students participating in TIMSS 2019 decreased compared to those participating in TIMSS 2015. The change in the correct answer rates was related to the decrease of relevant standards in the mathematics curriculum and tasks in mathematics textbooks.
 Meanwhile, for tasks about identifying a recursive pattern and representing a covariational relationship, the relevance of the mathematics curriculum materials to the changes in students’ algebraic thinking were not revealed due to the limitation of the small number of related TIMSS items. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the correct answer rates of students participating in TIMSS 2019 for recognizing recursive patterns and finding appropriate values decreased slightly. Finally, this study makes suggestions for the learning and teaching of early algebra based on the observed results.