The Development of Algebraic Thinking: Results of a Three-year Study The Development of Algebraic Thinking: Results of a Three-year Study

Analysis of three years of results from the same students in years 8, 9, and 10 shows a steady increase in algebraic thinking. One pair of schools outperformed the other three pairs on each occasion. The intermediate students from this pair of schools entered secondary school with a better understanding of algebraic thinking than did students from the other schools. The use of this thinking was encouraged by teachers in the secondary school despite that school not being in the Secondary Numeracy Project. An additional analysis showed that students who had reached stage 6 or higher in the Numeracy Development Project showed the greatest ability at generalising algebraic thinking. That is, they were most able to express concepts with letters on the basis of knowing how to operate fl exibly with numbers. Background In 2004, we embarked on a three-year study of specifi c students as they moved from intermediate schools that had been involved in the Intermediate Numeracy Project (INP) to secondary schools that might or might not be using the Secondary Numeracy Project (SNP) (see Irwin & Britt, 2005, 2006). Our hypothesis was that students with a good understanding of the legitimate manipulation of numbers for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division would be able to generalise thi