Collaborative Research: The Impact of Early Algebra on Students' Algebra-Readiness

早期代数对学生代数准备的影响是威斯康星州大学和TERC公司的合作项目。他们正在实施和研究一个以研究为基础的课程，旨在帮助3-5年级的儿童为中学代数学习做准备。 研究人员正在调查长期的，全面的早期代数经验对学生的影响，因为他们从三年级到六年级。 研究人员正在努力建立一个学习过程，描述代数概念如何从低年级到高中发展和成熟。 这项研究有助于建立我们对进入中学之前的进展部分的知识，许多学生开始正式的代数教学。在以前关于早期代数学习的研究的基础上，研究人员将教授一门精心设计的课程，以反映我们对学习代数概念的了解。先前的研究表明，来自不同背景的幼儿有能力构建代数概念，如等式，表示，概括和函数。研究人员正在收集有关学生代数知识和算术知识的数据。我们知道，美国大多数学生在学习形式代数方面都很吃力。 通过对研究型课程实施的长期研究，研究者们正在了解代数思想是如何联系在一起的，以及早期的代数思想教学是否有助于学生在中学学习更多的形式思想。

The Impact of Early Algebra on Students' Algebra-Readiness is a collaborative project at the University of Wisconsin and TERC, Inc. They are implementing and studying a research-based curriculum that was designed to help children in grades 3-5 prepare for learning algebra at the middle school level. Researchers are investigating the impact of a long-term, comprehensive early algebra experience on students as they proceed from third grade to sixth grade. Researchers are working to build a learning progression that describes how algebraic concepts develop and mature from early grades through high school. This study helps to build our knowledge about the piece of the progression that is just prior to entering middle school where many students begin formal instruction in algebra.Building on previous research about early algebra learning, researchers will teach a curriculum that was carefully designed to reflect what we know about learning algebraic concepts. Previous research has shown that young children from very diverse backgrounds have the ability to construct algebraic ideas such as equality, representation, generalization, and functions. Researchers are collecting data about students' algebraic knowledge as well as arithmetical knowledge.We know that the majority of students in the United States struggle with learning formal algebra. By studying the implementation of the research-based curriculum for an extended period of time, researcher's are learning about how algebraic ideas are connected and whether or not early instruction on algebraic ideas will help students learn more formal ideas in middle school.