Author:

Keywords:

strategy use, mathematics education

Abstract:

The goal of this introductory paper is to reflect upon some major theoretical and methodological issues related to children’s strategy use in (elementary) arithmetic. In the first part, I will discuss some major issues with respect to the strategy parameters variability, efficiency and flexibility. In the second part, I will critically look at various ways to identify children’s strategy use. Third, I will look at the relationship between children’s conceptual knowledge and number sense, on the one hand, and their strategic performance, on the other hand. I will end with a brief more fundamental reflection upon the notion of arithmetic strategies and the central place we gave it in our theorizing about children’s arithmetical thinking and learning.