CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF NUMBER SYMBOLS IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL CONTEXTS (BLACK, LOW INCOME, MATHEMATICS).
Item
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Title
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CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF NUMBER SYMBOLS IN FORMAL AND INFORMAL CONTEXTS (BLACK, LOW INCOME, MATHEMATICS).
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Identifier
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AAI8423058
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identifier
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8423058
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Creator
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FULANI, LENORA BRANCH.
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Contributor
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Joseph Glick
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Date
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1984
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Developmental | Black Studies
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Abstract
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A focus of the present study is an examination of the relationship between cognitive development and social knowledge. This was investigated by exploring children's developing understanding of number symbols in the domain of school and their everyday lives. One guiding assumption of this research is that when children do poorly on mathematical tasks one should not rely on cognitive structural deficits or on an inability to understand mathematical operations as explanations of poor performance. Another assumption guiding this work is one taken from Vygotsky which views cognitive activity--e.g. mathematical knowledge--not as an isolated "in the head" mental activity but an activity which is social in its origins and how it is conducted. Children in this society, depending on their race, sex and class, have different social relationships to the activity of mathematics.;There was a total of fifty-four black low income children in this study, ranging from first through third grades. Three tasks were designed for the study. Two of them, the On and Off Paper Tasks, were designed to explore children's understandings of the meaning of numbers as quantities and numbers as labels in the context of written and verbal tasks. They were also designed to explore if and when children were likely to confuse the two. The third task, the Conventions Task, was constructed to examine children's understandings of the grammar of mathematics tasks.;The hypotheses that the performance of on and off grade level children was a result of the inability of poor performers to distinguish between numbers as labels and numbers as quantities was not supported. However, there were developmental trends in the children's ability to make these differentiations and in the children's understanding of mathematical conventions.;Finally, the two areas of focus developing from the research project have to do with the development of formal and informal concepts and why the question of differential performance in young children is a major question in developmental psychology. In the area of the development of formal and informal number concepts evidence is provided to support Vygotsky's position that formal and informal concepts develop in reverse directions.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
