Abstract
The topic of Fractions has long been an area of major emphasis in mathematics education and continues to be a major challenge faced by elementary and middle school teachers. The study described in this chapter investigated the similarities and differences in the use of manipulatives for teaching fractions in two elementary schools (termed Sister Schools). Data were collected through Skype meetings; formal and informal conversations with teachers in both schools; and inter-school visits among school administrators and teachers in the two schools, classroom video clips, the sharing/exchange of documents, texts, teaching materials, and other teaching-learning resources. Our results show that, in the Canadian school, various concrete manipulatives are widely used to teach fractions—with pattern blocks, Cuisenaire rods, and fraction strips as the main ones, while pictorial manipulatives are far less used. In the Chinese school, pictorial manipulatives are widely used to teach fractions, while concrete manipulatives are infrequently used.
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Acknowledgement
The researchers gratefully acknowledge the grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, which funds the larger Reciprocal Learning Canada-China Partnership Project (898-2021-1011, Xu & Connelly, 2019), and on which this mathematics-focused study is based. The National Social Science Foundation in China (17XMZ032), which also partially funded the study, is also hereby appreciated.
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Peng, A., Ezeife, A.N., Yu, B. (2020). The Use of Manipulatives for Teaching Fractions in Two Canadian and Chinese Elementary Schools: A Comparative Research Analysis. In: Zhu, S.C., Xie, S., Ma, Y., McDougall, D. (eds) Reciprocal Learning for Cross-Cultural Mathematics Education . Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56838-2_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56838-2_12
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