Generalisation strategies and representation among last-year primary school students

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the role of functional relationships in introducing elementary school students to algebraic thinking. This functional approach is here considered to study essential components of algebraic thinking such as generalization and its representation, and also the strategies used by students and their connection with generalization. This paper jointly describes the strategies and representations of generalisation used by a group of 33 sixth-year elementary school students, with no former algebraic training, in two generalisation tasks involving a functional relationship. The strategies applied by the students differed depending on whether they were working on specific or general cases. To answer questions on near specific cases they resorted to counting or additive operational strategies. As higher values or indeterminate quantities were considered, the strategies diversified. The correspondence strategy was the most used and the common approach when students generalised. Students were able to generalise verbally as well as symbolically and varied their strategies flexibly when changing from specific to general cases, showing a clear preference for a functional approach in the latter.