[Numeracy 291] relational thinking & progressive alignment

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stellacsullivan at aol.com stellacsullivan at aol.com
Mon Apr 5 09:42:02 EDT 2010




Greetings,

I am a grad student at Georgia State University, and I am currently researching teaching relational thinking to children. Relational thinking is thinking that is constrained by the relational roles things play, rather than just the literal features of those things. In math, relational thinking is the basis for algebra. It is also needed to understand the equal sign and other comparative and temporal symbols (>,<, etc.) Further, it is needed to appreciate data analysis and probability (median, mode, etc). I am researching the intervention, progressive alignment (beginning with the easiest and most concrete examples and ending with the abstract concept), and hypothesize that this approach will increase the likelihood that students will be able to transfer their learning of a skill to other settings. Does anyone have any suggestions for places that I should look into to gather my research? Or does anyone have articles in mind that deal specifically with relational thinking and progressive alignment in teaching mathematics? Any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Thanks,

Stella Mercker
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