12 th International Congress on Mathematical Education Program Name XX-YY-zz (pp. abcde-fghij) 8 July – 15 July, 2012, COEX, Seoul, Korea (This part is for LOC use only. Please do not change this part.) abcde STRIVING TO MAXIMISE CHILDREN’S LEARNING OF MASS MEASUREMENT Andrea McDonough Australian Catholic University andrea.mcdonough@acu.edu.au Jill Cheeseman Monash University jill.cheeseman@monash.edu Sarah Ferguson Australian Catholic University sarahferguson@exemail.com.au This paper reports on one key element of a design experiment involving the teaching and learning of the measurement of mass with 119 children aged between 6 and 8 years. A sequence of lessons was developed to offer the children opportunities to experience and grapple with rich and challenging tasks. We designed hands-on lessons focused on key measurement understandings of comparison and unit and provided opportunities for children to work with both non-standard and standard units. The children’s engagement with the tasks and the mathematical ideas, evident in the rich discussions that ensued and results from assessment data collected before and after the teaching suggest that we had some success in working towards our goal of striving to maximise learning of mass measurement. We acknowledge that it is likely that along with the tasks, other factors including teacher actions, are likely to have contributed to children’s growth in understandings. Mass measurement; Foundational ideas; Rich tasks; Early years INTRODUCTION Teachers’ major concern is students’ learning and they strive to provide effective learning opportunities in their mathematics classrooms. We know that teachers play a key role in improving learning (e.g., Sullivan & McDonough, 2002). Our investigations into the learning of mass measurement were informed primarily by research on the learning of measurement particularly taking account of the development of foundational ideas of measure. Our use of tasks was influenced also by research on effective teaching of mathematics. There is widespread concern for effective teaching of mathematics (e.g., Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, 2006; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000). Research publications report practices of effective teachers of mathematics (e.g., Brown, Askew, Baker, Denvir & Millett, 1998; McDonough & Clarke 2003; Muir, 2007) that include having a clear mathematical focus; requiring thought rather than practice; emphasising and fostering meanings and connections; using open-ended tasks; and allowing autonomy for students to develop and discuss their own methods and ideas. Knowledge of such practices can inform teaching of measurement, including the design of tasks and the ways that those tasks are used in the classroom.