Smith and Jones: Children's thinking about some problems involving displacement along the number‐line

Abstract

Displacements along a number‐line are often used as a model for teaching operations with integers in school mathematics [1]. The author has already postulated in a previous article [2] that such an approach must involve formal operations, in Piaget's terms, when it comes to subtraction of negative integers and must therefore cause difficulty with children in the early stages of secondary school. The present investigation looks at children's thinking about some problems involving operations on a piece of apparatus embodying displacements along the number‐line.