The Construction of Proportional Reasoning

Abstract

The development of proportional reasoning has long been recognised as a central but problematic aspect of mathematics learning. In a Year 6 teaching intervention the part/whole notion of fractions was distinguished from the part:part notion of ratio, and the "between" and "within" relationships in ratio were emphasised. Numerous representations of fractions and ratio including LEGO construction activities were used to develop the multiplicative thinking associated with these concepts. The prepost results indicated this integrated approach helped students to apply proportional reasoning and to enumerate their responses.