Imagery and fractions in students classified as learning disabled. Learning Disability Quarterly

Abstract. This article describes constructivist principles of learning in geometry specific to children's imaginal antici-pations in line measurement and the related area of frac-tions. To assist with this discussion, seven sixth-grade stu-dents classified as learning disabled (LD) and receiving some type of special education service for mathematics were indi-vidually tested in tasks that investigated their imaginal anticipations of space and their representations of this understanding in the fraction symbol. Additionally, the investigation examined the effectiveness of constructivist teaching techniques in extending student thinking. All stu-dents perceived the most static elements of the line and could represent a metric unit. In the related area of fractions, they interpreted simple fractions as operational units. However, the majority of students were unable to coordinat