Yukari Okamoto
Outline of Talk
Understanding Culture and Children's Numerical Thinking: Contributions of Robbie Case's Theory
Robbie Case had a gift of seeing things beyond what was before his eyes. Robbie saw in the scribbles on the back of the math tests by young Japanese children a display of spatial understanding remarkably similar to that by North American children of the same ages. Would we find similar patterns of development for the domain of number as well? This is how our work on culture and numerical thinking began. In this presentation, I will discuss findings that suggest that numerical thinking appears to develop in a similar fashion among children who grow up in cultures as different as Asia and North America. These findings are particularly interesting because large differences in mathematics achievement have been reported between these two groups of children. I will show how Robbie's theory of central conceptual structures can explain this seeming contradiction.
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