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A comparative analysis of British and Taiwanese students conceptual and procedural knowledge of
fraction addition.
This study examines students procedural and conceptual achievement in fraction addition in
England and Taiwan. A total of 1209 participants (561 British students and
648 Taiwanese students) at ages 12 and 13 were recruited from England and Taiwan to
take part in the study. A quantitative design by means of a self-designed written test is
adopted as central to the methodological considerations. The test has two major parts:
the concept part and the skill part. The former is concerned with students conceptual knowledge of
fraction addition and the latter is interested in students procedural
competence when adding fractions.
There were statistically significant differences both in concept and skill parts between
the British and Taiwanese groups with the latter having a higher score. The analysis of
the students responses to the skill section indicates that the superiority of Taiwanese
students procedural achievements over those oftheir British peers is because most of
the former are able to apply algorithms to adding fractions far more successfully than
the latter. Earlier, Hart [1]reported that around 30% of the British students in their
study used an erroneous strategy (adding tops and bottoms, for example, 2/3 +1/7 =3/10) while
adding fractions. This study also finds that nearly the same percentage of
the British group remained using this erroneous strategy to add fractions as Hartfound
in 1981.
The study also provides evidence to show that students understanding of fractions is
confused and incomplete, even those who are successfully-able to perform operations.
More research is needed to be done to help students make sense of the operations and
eventually-attain computational competence with meaningful grounding in the domain
of fractions.
Keywords:conceptual knowledge; procedural knowledge; fractions; comparative;
cross-cultural
1.Introduction Since the 1950s, several influential large-scale international comparative studies have
measured pupils mathematical achievements such as Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
These studies not only provide information on pupils achievement examined in the context
of the worlds varied educational instruction,*2+but also help in identifying effective aspects
of educational practice.[3] Of
great interest to the international studies is the comparison
between Western and Eastern students. The results from the various international studies
showed that Eastern students consistently achieved higher marks among the participating
countries, whilst Western students performed relatively poorly, especially in numerical
competence.[48]
While there is much research concerning the comparison between the Western and
Eastern students achievement in mathematics, the available cross-cultural comparisons in
mathematics education have often been focused on the students between the United States
and Mainland China,[9]the United States and Taiwan,[10]the United States and Japan,[11]
or England and Japan.[8]There has been a lack of the literature on investigating students
mathematical performances between Taiwan and England over the past decades in mathematics
education. Therefore, this study attempts to fill this research gap by conducting a
small-scale cross-cultural comparative analysis of the procedural and conceptual competence
involving fractions between British and Taiwanese students. The intention here is not
to merely identify the superiority of one country over another. Rather, through comparing
the relative success or failure, the present study attempts to provide information about both
what students were able to do and which areas they still need to develop.
2.The teaching and learning of fractions.
Fractions are one of the primary pupils first experiences of a symbol involving the co-
ordination of several mathematical concepts. Earlier, Kieren [12]proposed a theoretical
sequence of fractions which contains five constructs: partwhole, quotient, operator, ratio,
and measure constructs. For example, to mathematicians, fractions are rational numbers
that can be expressed in a/b form where b =0 rather than parts of wholes. In fact, fractions
are not only ratios of two natural numbers, but also numbers in themselves.[13]They not
only represent a number (location) on a number line but also the operation of division.[14]
In addition, fractions are more than numbers to be operated upon. They can be operators
too;[15]2/3 of something is different from the number 2/3.
Research has emphasized the importance of teaching diverse perspectives of fractions
when helping students in developing more interconnected knowledge for fractions.[16]
Nevertheless, Davis et al. *17+argue that the teaching and learning of fractions is a dismal
failure, which often challenge students and teachers alike.[18, 19]Students may be able
to use the right fractional terms and solve some fractional problems, but several crucial
aspects of fractions still escape them.[20, 21]For example, many students refused to accept
3/5 as the result of 3 5.[1]Furthermore, a common strategy that students use to represent
the fraction 2/5 is that they would first draw a circle, divide it into four, and then divide
one of these in two, and therefore, shade two parts of the circle to represent the fraction
2/5.[22]Students are not aware of the importance of the equality of each part of a whole
when using diagrams to represent fractions.
It is also argued that typical instruction about fractions in schools tends to emphasis
a partwhole construct of fractions, which merely leads to the understanding of 3/5 as
three-out-of-five(parts), but not linked to the aspects of other constructs.[23] Such a
limited view of fractions can result in the resiliency of misconceptions about fractions [24]
and meanwhile, affect students mathematics learning,*25+such as in association with the
failure rate in algebra.[26]The lack of understanding of fractions may also cause conceptual
problems for students in their calculus classes, especially when they are learning about the
derivative as the rate of change.[27]
3.Purpose of the study
In the field of fractions, while over the past few decades, there have been fruitful theoretical
and empirical studies in this area; results from these studies have done very little to suggest




that learning and teaching fractions is not difficult and is not a daunting task. Arguably,
more research needs to be done to add to the knowledge base about how to help pupils
develop their understanding of fractions. An investigation into the demand for finding
feasible suggestions to the teaching and learning of fractions may substantially benefit from
comparative, cross-cultural research since many issues can be revealed more clearly.[28,29]
By comparing performance, with that of others across the world, the relative success or
failure can be made aware of.[8] Therefore, this study seeks to address the following
research questions that are fundamental to this comparison:
(1) Are there statistical differences in terms of conceptual and procedural performances
between British and Taiwanese students regarding fraction addition?
(2) What can we learn from the differences, if any, between British and Taiwanese
students knowledge of fractions?
4.Method
4.1.Sampling
This study decided to focus on students at ages 12 and 13 in both countries as English
students have not been introduced to fractional computations (algorithms) until they are
12. In addition, formal schooling begins at age six in Taiwan, while five in England.
The appropriateness to use age-based or grade-based sampling strategies was carefully
considered. When an age-based sampling strategy is used, students of a particular age (e.g.
12) are sampled and tested, whereas, if a grade-based sampling strategy is used, students of
a particular grade (e.g. seventh) are sampled and tested.
While an age-based sampling strategy is efficient insofar as it makes the maturity level
of the students as similar aspossible and allows for better international comparability,[30]it
also results in dissimilar educational experiences. In considering the impact of the maturity
level on the mathematical development of students, students from the age of 12 are developmental
at the start of abstract thinking and this is accompanied by a great understanding
of mathematical concepts.[31]Employing an age-based sampling strategy for drawing participants of
the same (or similar) maturity level from these two countries appears to be more
appropriate for the present study. The rationale for performing this study with 12 and 13
year olds was a result of psychological as well as educational research.[32]
4.2.The Sample
Schools attainment in Mathematics, English, and Science is officially reported every year
in England. Therefore, schools whose attainment average was close to the England average
were sought and approached. The final 561 (289 girls and 272 boys) British participants aged
12 and 13 were drawn from two secondary schools in Cambridgeshire, England. However,
there is no annual report of schools attainment in Taiwan. By means of contacting several
schoolteachers and parents to seek schools which could be considered average, two schools
were invited to take part in this study. The final sample of Taiwanese participants included
648 (309 girls and 339 boys) students aged 12 and 13 drawn from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
4.3.Instrument
According to the national curricula of England and Taiwan and the fraction-related literature, a self-
design test was developed and used as a means of data collection. It has two
parts: the concept part and the skill part. It maybe worth noting here that the purpose of this
test is to explore the differences between these two groups in their thought, knowledge, and
computation with fractions rather than assessing their abilities in dealing with fractions at
a diversity of difficult levels. Also, in concerning the limited time of participating schools
were able to offer the final number of questions in the test was therefore only involve eight
main questions (four questions in concept part and four questions in skill part). The teachers
of the participants administered the test, following a similar procedure, in which students
were first invited to read the instructions on the first page of the test that stated that the
test would last not more than 15 minutes, in which the students responses would not affect
their course grades and the purposes of the test. The students handed the test papers to their
teacher immediately on completion. The design of the skill and concept parts is briefly
described below.
4.3.1. Skill part Successfully operating addition with fractions largely relies on using and
understanding
the strategy of common denominator conversion worked in the addition context.[33]In
considering this, four levels involving fraction addition were distinguished by the present
study: Level 1 a child can add fractions with the same denominators, i.e. 1/5 +3/5;
Level 2 a child can add fractions in which only one of the denominators needs to be
converted, i.e. 1/4 +1/2; Level 3 a child can add fractions in which the lowest common
denominator can be found by merely multiplying the denominators, i.e. 2/3 +1/2: Level
4 a child can add fractions in which the lowest common denominator cannot be found
by merely multiplying the denominators, i.e. 5/6 +3/4. This skill part was thus designed
to involve these four questions: 1/5 +3/5 =?, 1/4 +1/2 =?, 2/3 +1/2 =?, and
5/6 +3/4 =?, in which students were asked to write down their strategies to show how
they would calculate a fraction addition task. It aims not only to seek how well students
perform in terms of fraction addition, but also to explore what strategies students use when
performing fraction addition.
4.3.2. Concept part
As mentioned above, each of these four questions in the skill part plays a significant role
in identifying students competence in fraction addition. In the concept part, therefore, it
also focused on students performance on these questions within the conceptual contexts.
Fractions are often associated with a diagram. The functions of pictorial representations
provide not only a visual presentation, but also in their emphasis on particular aspects of
the meanings represented by a fraction.[34]Therefore, the questions in the concept part are
presented in the form of diagrams that represent a fraction addition task. An example of
the questions is shown in Figure 1. The concept part will be described in more detail in the
subsequent section.


In summary,the test used by this study is concerned with the achievement of the students
in the aforementioned four questions (1/5 +3/5 =?, 1/4 +1/2 =?, 2/3 +1/2 =?, and
5/6 +3/4 =?) from two different perspectives. From a conceptual perspective, the concept
part (questions 14) aims to evaluate the students fractional conceptions and pictorially
represent their competence, while the skill part (questions 58) aims to investigate their
procedural skills when doing fraction addition from a procedural perspective. In doing so,
it seeks to identify underlying procedural and conceptual misconceptions that students have
with fractions through this cross-cultural and comparative approach.
4.3.3. Validity and reliability of the test
All items in the test were reviewed by mathematics educators in England and Taiwan to
ensure content validity. A pilot study of the test involving parallel groups in England and
Taiwan was conducted before the formal study to ensure that items were appropriately
worded and that the time for the test was sufficient. The Cronbach coefficients for the
British and Taiwanese students are 0.5618 and 0.7071, respectively. Ideally, an acceptable
Cronbachs alpha coefficient of a scale should be above 0.7. However, as Cronbach alpha
values maybe low with the short scales, in this case, it maybe more appropriate to report
the mean inter-item correlation.[35]The inter-item correlation for the British cohort was
thus examined, which is 0.3789, higher than the acceptable value of 0.2 recommended by
Briggs and Cheek.[36]It shows that the instrument used by the study has an acceptable
degree of reliability for both cohorts.
4.3.4. Scoring and coding
One point was given for each correct answer in the test, with nothing given for a wrong
answer. In coding students strategies in the skill part, no codes were set in advance, but
these were developed gradually when analyzing the students strategies shown on the test
papers.
5.Results
5.1.General results
Descriptive statistics, outlining the characteristics of the students performances, are presented in
Table 1. It provides general information regarding the participants achievements
in the concept and the skill parts in both the countries. Overall, the British students scored
lower than their Taiwanese peers on each part of the test, particularly in the skill part.
5.2. Significant differences
The independent sample test was also used to examine whether there were significant
differences in students procedural and conceptual performances between the two countries.
Table 2 shows that there were significant differences in the concept part and skill partscores
(t(1207) =-4.522, p<0.0005, effect size =0.0167; t(1207) =-21.283, p<0.0005,
effect size =0.283) between the British and Taiwanese groups, with the latter having a
higher mean score (mean =1.77 and 3.59, respectively). Based on the results of the effect
size, it shows that the magnitude of the differences in the means in the skill part scores
between the two groups was relatively large, while the effect size for concept part was quite
small.
On the basis of the evidence employed here, two general findings in terms of the
comparison between the British and Taiwanese students can be concluded.
First, in the concept part, it challenges students in both countries as generally less than a
half of the students were able to correctly respond to questions 14. In particular,the correct
percentages of the questions 2 and 4 are relatively lower than the other two questions. It
maybe worth noting here that while the Taiwanese students significantly performed better
than their British peers, the latter show better performance in question 1, among the eight
questions.
Second, in the skill part, it shows that the Taiwanese students were far more fluent in
doing basic fraction addition tasks than their British peers were. It is also noted that the
percentages of the British group who were able to correctly respond to the questions 7 and
8 considerably dropped in comparison with their performances on the questions 5 and 6,
while it is not so evident in the case of the Taiwanese group. In addition, as have shown
in Table 1, the correct percentage of each question decreases when the level of difficulty
increases in both countries. This supports the expectation that the skill part involves a
hierarchy of difficulty, which consists of four levels, as described earlier.
5.3. A further look at students responses to the concept part
It may be interesting to further look at the reasons why the Taiwanese group particularly
performed worse than the British group in question 1 and why questions 2 and 4 challenge many
students in both the groups. Table 3 shows the students response percentage of each
item on the concept part.
As has shown in Table 3,in question 1,more than half of the British students were able
to correctly respond to it, while fewer Taiwanese students did so.Onemain reason maybe
due to that 54.5%of the Taiwanese group,with less British students(35.8%), considered
that the diagram(a) as shown below represented 1/4 + 1/2 best.

It is reasonable to recognize this diagram: XXXXXXX as 1/4, XXXXXXXX and as
1/2. However, when combined into this diagram: , they cannot
be regarded as a representation of 1/4 +
1/2 from a mathematical perspective due to
the different sizes. Similarly, in question 4, 60.4% of the British group and 57.2% of
the Taiwanese group choose the diagram(c) (see Table 3) as the best representation of
1/5 +
3/5. Again, the two pentagons drawn in diagram (c) do not reasonably represent
1/5 +
3/5 as they are different in size.It appears that the students merely focused on the
representations and were not aware of that unit wholes in a fraction addition problem need to be
same size.

Earlier, Hart*1+reported adding tops and bottoms as a common misconception held
by many students when doing fraction addition. Likewise,the results of the concept part as shown in
Table 3 also imply that the students may have an adding top and adding bottom
mis conception.For example,in question 2, 67.1%of the British group and 39.6%of the
Taiwanese group,with more British students, considered that the diagram(a)(see below)
represents 2/3 +
1/2 the best rather than the correct item.In essence,the following diagram
can be seen to represent this adding top and adding bottom misconception.


It seems that partly due to the influence of counting schemes,in terms of addition,for
children, adding largely means combining sets and counting their elements to obtain a sum.
There is no denying that the conventional counting system regarding whole numbers is the
foundation of childrens development of numbers;*37+however, the difficulty associated
with the shift from whole numbers to fractions may hinder the development of fractional
concepts.[38] That is to say,the whole number construct may result in a misconception in
the addition of fractions,which leads students to this common misconception: adding tops
and bottoms.

5.4. A further look at students responses to the skill part
In the skill part,it is evident that the Taiwanese students are clearly superior to the British
students in addition procedures. In analyzing the strategies that the students used when
adding fractions,two main strategies are identified. One is to use algorithms correctly.The
other is to add numerators and denominators. The former is associated with the correct
responses to the questions, while the latter is related to the erroneous responses. The
percentage of these two strategies used in questions 58 was calculated and the average of the
percentages of these four questions for the two strategies is presented in Table 4.



Table 4 shows that about 90% of the Taiwanese students were able to correctly use
algorithms to add fraction, while less than 33% of the British students in the study were
able to do so. This suggests that the superiority of the Taiwanese students performance in
the skill part over that of their British peers is due to the fact that most of the former are
able to apply algorithms to adding fraction far more successfully than are the latter. Table 4
also shows that around 30% of the British group used the strategy of adding numerators and
denominators to add fractions. It could be noticed that this is nearly the same percentage
that was reported in 1981 by Hart.[1]Incidentally, one student in British group wrote on the
test paper to explain his/her strategy. He/she wrote: the easiest way to do fraction addition
is to add tops and bottoms. This makes fractions as easy as possible. It appears that he/she
was not aware of any unreasonableness in his/her strategy. It has been almost 30 years since
Harts study, there seems to be no improvement in the number of British students who use
this erroneous strategy to solve fraction addition tasks the past decades.
It should be noted here that while the majority of the Taiwanese group performed well
in the skill part and less than 4% of them were observed to use the adding tops and
bottoms strategy, it does not necessarily mean that they did not hold this misconception.
As mentioned earlier, in the concept part, it is observed that nearly 40% of the Taiwanese
students considered this diagram: + as the best
representation of2/3 +1/2. This provides evidence to suggest that the Taiwanese students
may also hold the adding tops and bottoms misconception, despite calculating correctly.
6. Discussions
Children often are, traditionally,taught algorithms about fractions with little attention to any
meaningful grounding in this area.[39]Their attention may therefore be paid to remember
procedures rather than make relationships between numbers.[40]Learning fractions seems
to be simply an attempt to get the correct answer by manipulating symbols. There is
no denying that mathematical competence needs to require knowing both what to do
(procedural knowledge) and why(conceptual knowledge). These two types of knowledge
are both necessary, working as allies, such as carbohydrates and protein.[41] As Tall et al.
[42]argue, students who are able to recognize the essential qualities of the symbolism as
both process and concept have less difficulty in learning new mathematics than those who
mainly focus on the routine expertise.
Kilpatrick et al. [43]also suggest that mathematical proficiency is developed through
five interwoven and interdependent strands: conceptual understanding, procedural fluency,
strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition. In the domain of
fractions, algorithms may develop students mathematical proficiency by rote; however,
it is definitely not desirable to abandon learning and fluency in computing with fractions
altogether. What is really required is to help students to understand the meaning and nature
of algorithms, eventually facilitating their meaningful learning of both concepts and skills
in mathematics.
In this study, through a cross-cultural and comparative approach, the students relative
success or failure in terms of conceptual and procedural knowledge of fraction addition
was revealed clearly. Attention and much effort are needed to help the British students to
develop their procedural fluency. The failure in the responses to the concept part in relation
to the pictorial presentations in both the countries makes us aware of teaching fractions with
diagrams and of students poor understanding about the concepts of fractions. Furthermore,
there is an awareness that despite the fact that most of the Taiwanese students were capable
of successfully computing the addition of fractions, some of those who are able to carry out
algorithms procedural do not necessarily have a sound understanding of the mathematics
underlying them.
In line with the literature,[37-43]this study also suggests that, while the students may
have learnt about fractions both procedural and conceptually their ability to use this
knowledge may remain underdeveloped. Therefore, this calls attention to examine further
whether or not school instructions on fractions reflect a careful consideration for offering
children the opportunity to develop reasoning, representing, and computing competences.
7.Conclusions
In this study, the application of a quantitative approach helps provide a general picture
of students performance on fractions in England and Taiwan, with significant differences
favoring Taiwanese students in both parts of the assessment. It is acknowledged that there
are limitations of this quantitative methodology in examining the features of the conceptual
and procedural developments of students. Nevertheless, some valuable insights into the
difficulties that the students in both countries have with fractions are not invalidated.
In the concept part, it reports that both groups scored low in the concept part and
that their ability in recognizing pictorial presentations in the field of fractions seems to be
underdeveloped, even for those who were able to well perform the operations. In the skill
part, it is evident that the British group was not fluent in computing with fractions, while
their Taiwanese peers were able to successfully perform the procedures. To sum up, on the
basis of the evidence in the study, it concludes four key issues of major concern:
the need for a close examination of the introduction of fractions with diagrams in the
teaching and learning of fractions;
the need to facilitate, develop, and enhance the ability of the pictorial presentations
of the students regarding fractions;
the perceived low achievement in computing with fractions, particularly in England;
the perceived inequality in the procedural and conceptual developments of students
regarding fraction addition, particularly in Taiwan.
The issues above, which are supported by the present study, have implications for
improving future mathematics teaching in the domain of fractions for both the countries.
Students achievement needs to be viewed, not in the narrow sense of the scores achieved,
but from the standpoint of educational development. It is hoped that the present study
provides a better understanding of the difficulty that students have with fractions in general
and of onesown problems in particular. In addition, it also attempts to call for more research
to be done to help students understand and make sense of fractions.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Dr Tsung-Lung Tsai and Dr Paul Andrews for their professional advice.
She also wishes to express her deepest gratitude to the teachers and students for their help.