A study on the teaching of the concept of negative numbers

Kemal Altiparmak and Ece Özdogan have written an article that was recently published online in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. The article is entitled A study on the teaching of the concept of negative numbers. Here is the abstract of their article.

This study mainly aims to develop an effective strategy to overcome the known difficulties in teaching negative numbers. Another aim is to measure the success of this teaching strategy among a group of elementary level pupils in Idotzmir, Turkey. Learning negative concepts are supported by computer animations. The academic achievement test developed by the researchers was administered to 150 sixth-grade pupils at the beginning of and following the learning period. The teaching strategy was applied to the experiment group (n = 75) as stated above, while the traditional teaching model most frequently used in Turkey was applied to the control group (n = 75). At the end of the study, a significant difference was found in favour of the experiment group (t = 17.51, df = 148, p = 0.000 < 0.05).