The Teaching of Initial Multiplication Concepts and Skills in Croatian Textbooks

izvorni znanstveni rad

izvorni znanstveni rad

The Teaching of Initial Multiplication Concepts and Skills in Croatian Textbooks

Vrsta prilog u časopisu
Tip izvorni znanstveni rad
Godina 2022
Časopis CEPS - Center for Educational policy Studies journal
Volumen 12
Svesčić 2
Stranice str. 119-141
DOI 10.26529/cepsj.1303
ISSN 1855-9719
EISSN 2232-2647
Status objavljeno

Sažetak

The goal of this paper is to describe the teaching of initial multiplication concepts and skills, up to the multiplication table, in the Croatian edu-cational system. As Stiegler and Hiebert (1999) concluded, teaching is a complex system rooted in a cultural script of a given society. To describe it without ignoring certain features of it that appear to be self- evident to an insider, it is necessary to step out of this cultural frame. For that reason, we study the teaching of initial multiplication in Croatia by comparing Croa-tian mathematical textbooks with textbooks from Singapore, Japan, and England. For the textbook analysis, we adapt the framework of Charalam-bous, Delaney, Hsu, and Mesa that examines a textbook as an environ-ment for the construction of knowledge of a single mathematical concept.The analysis provides evidence that practice and automation are at the centre of the initial learning of multiplication in Croatia. The meaning of multiplication usually is not clear, and pupils are not provided additional tools for developing understanding, nor they are encouraged to use differ-ent calculation strategies in a flexible manner. The study also indicates that Croatian textbooks present mathematics as a practice that is closed and pre-given, restricted to the one and the only right way through it.

Ključne riječi

concept construction ; multiplication ; textbook analysis