An Attempt to Understand Students' Understanding of Basic Algebra

This paper reports the results obtained with a group of 24 14-year-old students when presented with a set of algebra tasks by the Leeds Modelling System, LMS. These same students were given a comporoble paper-and-pencil test crud detailed interviews some four months later. The latter studies uncovered several kinds of student misunderstandings that LMS had not detected. Some students had profound misunderstandings of algebraic notation: Others used strategies such as substituting numbers for voriables until the equotion bolonced. Additionally, it oppears that the student errors fall into severol distinct classes: namely, manipulative, parsing, clerical. and “random.”