March 1999, Vol. 30, Issue 2
Advancing Children's Mathematical Thinking in Everyday Mathematics Classrooms
Judith L. Fraivillig, Lauren A. Murphy, Karen C. Fuson
In this article we present and describe a pedagogical framework that supports children's development of conceptual understanding of mathematics. The framework for Advancing Children's Thinking (ACT) was synthesized from an in-depth analysis of observed and reported data from 1 skillful 1st-grade teacher using the Everyday Mathematics (EM) curriculum. The ACT framework comprises 3 components: Eliciting Children's Solution Methods, Supporting Children's Conceptual Understanding, and Extending Children's Mathematical Thinking. The framework guided a cross-teacher analysis over 5 additional EM 1st-grade teachers. This comparison indicated that teachers often supported children's mathematical thinking but less often elicited or extended children's thinking. The ACT framework can contribute to educational research, teacher education, and the design of mathematics curricula.
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