A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures

Anderson Norton; Steven Boyce; Nathan Phillips; Tessa Anwyll; Catherine Ulrich; Jesse L. M. Wilkins

doi:10.29333/iejme/295

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Anderson Norton, Steven Boyce, Nathan Phillips, Tessa Anwyll, Catherine Ulrich, Jesse L. M. Wilkins

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Abstract

Units coordination refers to students’ abilities to create units and maintain their relationships with other units that they contain or constitute. In recent research, units coordination has arisen as a key construct that mediates opportunities for student learning across several domains of mathematics, including fractions knowledge and algebraic reasoning. To date, assessments of students’ stages of units coordinating ability have relied upon clinical interviews or teaching experiments whose time-intensive nature precludes opportunities for conducting large-scale studies. We introduce a written instrument that teachers and researchers can use with large populations of students. We report on the reliability and validity of assessments based on the instrument.

Keywords

assessment
fractions
multiplicative reasoning
units coordination
written instrument

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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, Volume 10, Issue 2, May 2015, 111-136

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

Publication date: 02 Aug 2015

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How to cite this article

APA

Norton, A., Boyce, S., Phillips, N., Anwyll, T., Ulrich, C., & Wilkins, J. L. M. (2015). A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 10(2), 111-136. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

Vancouver

Norton A, Boyce S, Phillips N, Anwyll T, Ulrich C, Wilkins JLM. A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2015;10(2):111-36. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

AMA

Norton A, Boyce S, Phillips N, Anwyll T, Ulrich C, Wilkins JLM. A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2015;10(2), 111-136. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

Chicago

Norton, Anderson, Steven Boyce, Nathan Phillips, Tessa Anwyll, Catherine Ulrich, and Jesse L. M. Wilkins. "A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2015 10 no. 2 (2015): 111-136. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

Harvard

Norton, A., Boyce, S., Phillips, N., Anwyll, T., Ulrich, C., and Wilkins, J. L. M. (2015). A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 10(2), pp. 111-136. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295

MLA

Norton, Anderson et al. "A Written Instrument for Assessing Students’ Units Coordination Structures". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 10, no. 2, 2015, pp. 111-136. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/295