The alignment of student fraction learning with textbooks in Korea and the United States

Abstract

A variety of international comparison studies of textbooks have been conducted on the assumption that a mathematics textbook is a critical factor in preparing students for mathematical achievement. The idea suggests that mathematics textbooks be written in a way that promotes students’ cognitive developmental continuum of particular mathematical concepts. In the present study, we investigate how mathematics textbooks in Korea and the United States (in particular, Everyday Mathematics) entail students’ learning progressions in terms of three operations (recursive partitioning, common partitioning, and distributive partitioning) that we assert undergird students’ constructions of higher levels of fraction knowledge. Using the three operations and hierarchical relationships among them as an analytical framework, we select relevant topics with the operations and show how those topics are well aligned with our framework. We also discuss how the tasks included in the topics afford and constrain students’ development of coherent fraction learning in terms of the framework.