engleski

Number representation in textbooks for primary mathematics education in Croatia

One of the key competencies for everyday life is working with numbers. Since the number is an abstract notion that signifies the common property of equipotent sets, in mathematics education, the notion is developed from concrete experience, through a pictorial view toward an abstract idea. Number representation has an essential role in the process. Understanding, using and interpreting different representations is a relevant component of number sense. The Croatian mathematics curriculum includes representing numbers in different ways. Considering that primary school teachers in Croatia use textbooks in teaching mathematics, it is relevant to recognise the number representation in textbooks. We explored which representations of numbers are used in the textbooks for the first three primary school grades from different publishers aligned with the curriculum. The results revealed various representations across textbooks. The cardinality of a particular set is a dominant number representation. Textbooks rarely suggest a concrete experience, use a few representations, and skip ahead to the abstract idea of the number. It is a teacher's responsibility to organise concrete experience and implement representation from textbooks of different editions.

mathematics textbook ; number representation ; number sense ; primary mathematics education

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