The Study On The Development Of Understanding Of Length In Young Children Aged 4-6

The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental characteristics in young children's understanding of lengh, and the relationship among children's essential concept of length, seriation of length, and conservation of length. A sample of 111 children aged 4-6 was randomly selected from 12 classes in two ordinary preschools in Shanghai. The test to assess young children's understanding of length in this study was adapted from study created by Boulton-Lewis and colleagues (Boulton-Lewis, Wilss & Mutch, 1996) and Bladen and colleagues, (Bladen, Widilish & Cox, 2000). The study examined the status of young children's essential concept and seriation and conservation of length by means of Descriptive Statistics; the effects of age and gender and school on the performances of child's understanding of length by MANOVA; the relationship among essential concept of length, seriation of length, and conservation of length abilities through Correlation Analysis. The implication of the study was also dicussed.The result indicated that most of the children who aged 4 to 6 years had good ability of the concept of length; the children aged 4-6 would like to choose standarized tools rather than nonstandarized tools in measurement of length, but the ability is poor, 10 percents of children aged 6 could measure length correctly by nonstandarized tools; the strategies on seriation of length included visual perception, overlap, equally, and compare between two objects, minority of children between 5 to 6 could use convenient strategies; the strategies on conservation of length included judged by bend or straight, judged by number, judged by the size of the card, judged by the size of figure, minority of children between 5 to 6 could corresponding count, imagine the transfiguration of the figure,and reason.The significant positive correlation emerged among children's performance on children's essential concept of length, seriation of length, and conservation of length. But no gender discrimination was found on the children's understanding of lengh.