Incorrect Ways of Thinking About the Size of Fractions

Abstract

The literature has amply shown that primary and secondary school students have difficulties in understanding rational number size. Many of these difficulties are explained by the natural number bias or the use of other incorrect reasoning such as gap thinking. However, in many studies, these types of reasoning have been inferred from comparing students' accuracies in multiple-choice items. Evidence that supports that these incorrect ways of reasoning are indeed underlying is scarce. In the present work, we carried out interviews with 52 seventh grade students. The objective was to validate the existence of students' incorrect ways of thinking about fraction size that were previously inferred from patterns of correct and incorrect answers to multiple-choice items, by looking at students' verbalizations, and examine whether these ways of thinking are resistant to change. Students' verbalizations support the existence of the different incorrect ways of thinking inferred from previous studies in fraction size. Furthermore, the high levels of confidence in their incorrect reasoning and the fact that they were reluctant to change their answer when they were confronted with other reasoning suggest that these ways of thinking may be resistant to change.