A Study Of Errors In Primary School Students’ Learning Of Speed Concepts

Errors are inevitable and universal in mathematics learning.When solving distance problems,elementary school students often make typical errors such as conceptual confusion.By viewing students’ errors as a phenomenon and researching the reasons and patterns behind them,teachers can not only help students identify the causes of their errors and provide suggestions for correction,but also understand the rationality of errors and diagnose students’ difficulties accurately,thus enriching their knowledge and views on mathematics.Based on the relevant knowledge of the speed concept in the Chinese primary school mathematics textbook published by People’s Education Press,this study compiled a test paper and selected 305 students from two primary schools in Chengdu and Sanya for investigation,mainly using qualitative and quantitative analysis of the survey results.For quantitative analysis,the study used Excel 2019 and SPSS 27.0 to encode the data based on students’ answers to grasp their overall learning situation.For qualitative analysis,the study mainly used a question-by-question analysis method to identify the characteristics of students’ errors for each question,generalize the types of errors based on these characteristics,and finally summarize the results.The main types of errors that elementary school students often make when solving problems related to the speed concept are: confusion in conceptual understanding,empirical understanding of variable relationships,confusion in establishing quantity relationships,and confusion in bidirectional problem situations.Based on the test results and existing research,the study summarizes the reasons why students make the above types of errors: the influence of prior concepts on the development of students’ speed concept,inadequate connection between experience and abstract terms,single presentation of distance problems,and lack of cultivation of covariant reasoning ability.Finally,based on the test results and existing research,the author proposes two teaching suggestions: interdisciplinary integration teaching and understanding speed through multiple representation methods.Hopefully,these suggestions can provide reference for teaching and future research.