1.

A Critical Review of NCTM Articles

-Fractions
Article 1
DAmbrasio, B. & Kastberg, S.E. (2012). Building understanding of
Decimal Fractions.

Teaching Children Mathematics. 18(9), 559-

565.

Introduction

Beatriz DAmbrosio is a professor at Miami University

in Oxford, Ohio. Her area of expertise is mathematics with
specialties in mathematics teaching and learning,
mathematics teacher education, curricular reform in school
mathematics and math education. Signe E. Kastberg has
her Ph.D. in Mathematics Education and is a professor at
Purdue University in West Lafayette. She has specialties in
postsecondary learner's development of mathematics
content knowledge; prospective elementary teacher
knowledge development in the multiplicative conceptual
field; children's knowledge development in the
multiplicative conceptual field; constructivist teaching.
Both authors backgrounds and specialties provide them
with the expertise in their field.

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Summary
This article discusses an investigation looking at
decimal understanding amongst pre-service teachers and
students. The investigators presented pre-service teachers
and students with decimal grids and were told to illustrate
and explain their thinking when ordering 0.606, 0.0666,
0.6, 0, 0.66 and 0.060. Several of the pre-service teachers
struggled with using the grid paper to represent the
decimal numbers. They had five students complete this
question and they used their answers to draw their
conclusion. Four out of the five students struggled like the
pre-service teachers. By analyzing the students work it
revealed to them three distinctive sources of difficulty of
understanding decimal numerals and their representations
of quantities. The first source of difficulty is that students
didnt understand the relationship between the various
subdivisions of a whole. The second source of difficulty
many students did not see the additive nature of the
decimal places. The last, and most important, difficulty is
that relying on procedures for ordering decimals can mask
a students true understanding of the relative size of

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decimal numerals. DAmbrosio and Kastberg offer solutions

for these three difficulties they uncovered. For the first
difficulty teachers should focus on only one grid at a time
and instruct students to use that particular grid to show
different decimal quantities. The second solution is for
teachers to place a larger emphasis on additive nature of
the place-value system. The last strategy is to provide
follow up tasks for students that continue to build the
students understanding of the relationships between and
among subdivisions. The article concludes with the
recommendation that procedural routines that mask
students misunderstanding of how to represent decimals
can be avoided if teachers begin with idea of what makes
decimals difficult for students to fully grasp and as they
teach to keep those difficulties in mind.

Personal Response
The authors provide much evidence to support their
argument. The study would have benefitted from extending it to
a variety of students as opposed to just the five they used.
Kastberg and DAmbrosio focus only on the grid paper as a tool
to reveal the students misconceptions, only using the grid paper
restricts the students. Perhaps they were more
comfortable/better understood how to answer the question with

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another manipulative or diagram. This final recommendation is a
vital.

Conclusion
Manipulatives and diagrams are crucial to students
learning but not teaching students how to understand and use
these can be detrimental to their learning. By doing this study
with not only elementary students but also pre-service teachers
it illustrates the results of not addressing this issue.

Article 2 Kent, L.B., Empson, S.B., & Nielsen, L. (2015). The richness of childrens
fraction strategies.

Teaching children mathematics. 22(2), 85-90.

Introduction
Summary
Presentation
Personal Response
Conclusion

Article 3

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McCormick, K.K. (2015). Making Fractions Meaningful. Teaching children

mathematics.

22(4), 231-238.

Introduction
Summary
Presentation
Personal Response
Conclusion