PROFILES OF UNDERSTANDING AND PROFILES OF DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY ARITHMETIC

Children’s knowledge of arithmetic is made up of many components ( e.g. conceptual understanding, procedural skill, factual knowledge) and is therefore difficult to capture with a single measure. Profiles of understanding map children’s performance across tasks and can reveal differences among children in the relationship between components of arithmetical skill. A re-analysis of several studies examining children’s conceptual and procedural knowledge of addition and subtraction revealed subgroups of children with different profiles of understanding. These subgroups may represent different routes to the development of arithmetic knowledge and so it may be important to consider profiles of development as well as profiles of