DOI: 10.30964/auebfd.1860372 ISSN: 1301-3718

Examining Elementary School Students’ Flexibility in Operations

Ebru Aylar Çankaya
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Strategy flexibility in operations can be defined as students' tendency to solve any operation using different strategies and to select and apply these strategies appropriately depending on the given operation. Flexibility also requires thinking about numbers in a flexible and part-whole relation, and flexibility in operations is also considered a component of number sense. The main aim of this study is to reveal how 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade primary school students perceive and interpret different strategies that can be used for addition, subtraction, and multiplication operations and to examine their flexibility in operations in this context. A qualitative descriptive study was conducted for this purpose. A total of 135 students attending an primary school in the Çankaya district of Ankara participated in the study. During the data collection process, a three-question strategy assessment form covering addition, subtraction, and multiplication operations, prepared separately for each grade level, was used. When all grade levels and strategies were examined together, the strategy that students accepted as correct at the highest level was the standard algorithm, while the strategy accepted as correct at the lowest level was the strategy involving the verbal description of the mental process. In general, students found the solution confusing and incomprehensible when the number of operations in the given strategy increased or when other forms of representation besides symbolic representation were included in the strategy.

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