The importance of equal sign understanding in 4th and 5th grades: A mixed method study

The aim of the current study was to investigate fourth and fifth grade students' equal sign conceptions in the light of the revised Turkish mathematics curriculum (MoNE, 2018) that includes newly added objectives related to the equal sign concept in fourth grade. The study was conducted in a private school in Istanbul, Turkey, during the spring semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. A total of 53 students-30 fourth grade and 23 fifth grade-participated in the study. Both the arithmetic achievement test and the equal sign test (EST) taken from Capraro et al. (2011) were used as instruments. After applying the tests, the semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain a deeper insight into the students' equal sign conceptions. Moreover, the fourth and fifth grade students' textbooks and other course materials were analyzed in terms of 13 standard and non-standard equal sign contextual presentations. According to the quantitative analysis results, the average score of fifth-grade students was 11.21 whereas the fourth-grade students' average score was 8.13 out of 13 in the EST. The analysis of the course materials displayed that standard contextual presentations of the equal sign, that are only helpful for teaching the operational view, have higher frequencies in fourth grade, whereas non-standard presentations are dramatically high in fifth grade. The results of the semi-structured interviews supported that both the fourth and fifth grade students have some misunderstandings of the relational meaning according to the error patterns found in the EST results. The educational implications, limitations, and recommendations for future studies were also discussed.