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大学和TERC公司的一个合作项目。他们正在实施和研究一项基于研究的课程，该课程旨在帮助3-5年级的孩子为中学阶段学习代数做准备。研究人员正在调查长期、全面的早期代数体验对学生从三年级到六年级的影响。研究人员正在努力建立一个学习进度，描述代数概念从早期年级到高中是如何发展和成熟的。这项研究有助于我们建立关于进入中学之前的级数部分的知识，在那里许多学生开始正式的代数教学。在之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具有构建等式、表示、概括和函数等代数概念的能力。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，美国大多数学生都在努力学习形式代数。通过对研究性课程实施的长期研究，研究人员正在了解代数概念是如何联系在一起的，以及早期的代数概念教学是否有助于学生在中学学习更正式的概念。

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.