Essays / Facilitating Children's Learning [11]

At issue in this study was the extent to which large numbers of classroom teachers were able to implement research-based materials with a minimum of inservice education and whether students of these teachers were able to develop the rich mental images for fractions similar to the ones students from previous Rational Number Project (RNP) studies developed in smaller experimental settings. An analysis of student interviews demonstrated that RNP students did in fact develop rich mental images for fractions similar to students in previous studies. As expected the nature of RNP students' thinking about rational number was far richer than students who used textbook curriculum and indicated a more conceptually oriented framework.