ABSTRACT

Despite increasing data on young children’s patterning skills and evidence of a link between early pattern knowledge and later mathematics performance, little is known about the strategies children use to solve patterning tasks. This mixed-methods study examined 3- to 5-year-old children’s informal strategies when solving eight patterning tasks with three different repeating patterns. In a sequential qualitative-quantitative design, patterning strategies were first longitudinally observed and categorized into five hierarchically ordered categories (n = 6), and then cross-sectionally tested and quantified (n = 174). Results show that young children use various different patterning strategies, and that both patterning strategies and skills organically develop between the age of three and five. However, despite high correct solution rates, the 5-year olds’ strategies still reflect little attention to the patterns’ structure, suggesting that a pattern and structure based instruction is needed to help young children abstract the unit of repeat.

摘要

尽管有关幼儿的图案技能的数据不断增加，并且有证据表明早期的图案知识和后期的数学成绩之间存在联系，但对于儿童用来解决图案任务的策略知之甚少。这项混合方法研究在解决具有三种不同重复模式的八种模式任务时，研究了3至5岁儿童的非正式策略。在顺序定性定量设计中，首先纵向观察构图策略，并将其分为五个层次排序的类别（n = 6），然后进行横截面测试和量化（n = 174）。结果表明，幼儿使用各种不同的构图策略，并且构图策略和技能在三到五岁之间有机地发展。但是，尽管正确率很高，