Teaching correlates of number conservation to very young children

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Betsy Roberts Schenck (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Helen Canaday

Abstract: The purposes of the experiment were to find out whether or not children under five years of age could conserve numbers and to ascertain if the ability to conserve numbers could be taught to three-, four-, and five-year-old children. It was hypothesized that two teaching sessions would be ineffective in teaching young children to conserve number; that there would be no difference in conservation of number scores by children according to sex; and that conservation of number scores would increase as the children increased in age. The subjects were 37 boys and 35 girls, ages 3 years 7 months to 6 years 9 months, from middle-class families. Experimental and control groups were pretested on conservation of number. The test included a warm-up item and the following transformations: rotation, equal addition, collapsing, and expansion. The transformations were performed on arrays of 5 pairs of black checkers. Two questions were asked after each transformation. "Does this row have the same number of checkers as this row?" and "Does one row have more checkers than the other row?" Explanations of conserving responses were not required.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 1973
Subjects
Number concept in children
Mathematical readiness
Number concept $x Study and teaching (Preschool)

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