Results of a teaching experiment to foster the conceptual understanding of multiplication based on children's literature

The importance of conceptual understanding in mathematics has been well documented (Hiebert & Carpenter, 1992). This paper reports selected results from a research study that used a conjecture-driven teaching experiment (Confrey & Lachance, 1999) to enhance Year 3 students’ conceptual understanding of multiplication. The teaching experiment employed children’s literature as a mediational tool for students to explore and engage in multiplication activities and dialogue. The SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1989) was used to both frame the novel teaching and learning activities, as well as assess the level of students’ conceptual understanding of multiplication