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Cinzia Bonotto

Introduction

There is considerable evidence from studies involving both school students and adults that the system of decimal numbers is neither simple to learn nor generally understood (Hiebert, 1985; Stacey & Steinle, 1999). A central problem seems to be that few connections are made between the form students learn in the classroom and understandings they already have (or could acquire quickly). Thus it is important that teachers recognize the numerical culture acquired outside the scholastic environment in order to offer children the opportunity to develop new mathematical knowledge preserving the focus on meaning found in everyday situations (Bonotto, 2004).

The explorative study presented in this report involves a teaching experiment in upper elementary school aimed at enhancing, through extensive use of a ruler, the understanding of some aspects of decimal numbers and the construction of a comprehensive numerical structure, which integrates both the natural and the decimal number systems.

This study is part of an ongoing research project aimed at showing how an extensive use of suitable cultural artifacts can play a fundamental role in bringing students' out-of-school reasoning experiences into play, by creating a new tension between school mathematics and everyday-life knowledge with its incorporated mathematics (Bonotto, 2004).

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