The Manifestations And Characteristics Of Grade 7 Students' Relational Thinking

Recently, the study of relational thinking has become one of the most attractive problems in mathematics education. One criticle aim of the study in this field is to help students to realize the transition from arithmetic to algebra by applying students nessesary arithmetic experience related to their algebra learning. Many foreign researchers have done many researches on this topic, but there is rare related study in China. Therefore, this study will be meaningful for explor Chinese students' Relational Thinking.Based on the analysis of the students' responses to the one missing number sentence, two missing number sentence and number sentence with symbles, which were set in the questionnaire and interview, this study finally makes some important conclusions on the manifestations and characteristics of grade 7 students' Relational Thinking, as following:The manifestations of Relational Thinking includes: most grade 7 students can use Relational Thinking to solve one missing number sentence, but computational thinking is still inevitable; in the context of one missing number sentence, more students can use Relational Thinking in division and subtractions than in multiplication and addition; comparing with one missing number sentence, two missing number sentence is more easy for students to use Relational Thinking; there are some relationships among three types of number sentence.The characteristics of Relational Thinking involves: The students who can use Relational Thinking are able to: see equal sign as a relational symbol; apply factoring, compensation and equivalence correctly; focus on the structure of expression. And students manifests differently to certain extent in these three aspects.