Ideas of early division prior to formal instruction

Abstract

Often young children develop ideas of mathematics before they formally meet them at school. Such is the case with early counting concepts. However, little is known about children’s early ideas of division. The study reported here investigated the ideas of 114 children (5-6-years old) before they had received any formal instruction about division in their first year at school. A pencil and paper test comprising worded problems with diagrams was read aloud by the teacher. We analysed children’s drawings on the diagrams. Results indicate that 74% of children could conceive of at least one division situation prior to any instruction. Some children (20%) could interpret quotitive and partitive division problems. Children drawing on diagrams can provide evidence of their conceptual interpretation of division problems.