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Manipulatives And The Growth Of Mathematical Understanding, Stacie Joyce Gibbons

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe how manipulatives facilitated the growth of one group of high school students' mathematical understanding of combinatorics and Pascal's Triangle. The role of manipulatives in mathematics education has been extensively studied, but much of the interest in manipulatives is focused on the general uses of manipulatives to support student learning. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research that explicitly defines how manipulatives can help students develop mathematical understanding. I have chosen to examine mathematical understanding through the lens of the Pirie-Kieren Theory for Growth of Mathematical Understanding. Through analysis of the students' explorations …