Proportional reasoning: a case study highlighting its significance in mathematics curriculum

Proportional reasoning: a case study highlighting its significance in mathematics curriculum

This paper outlines a study that was undertaken with a typical thirteen year old boy. This boy was experiencing
difficulty with his work on percentages, basic trigonometry and simple equation solving. Our intervention with
the boy led us to suspect that there was a connection between his understanding (or lack thereof) of these
concepts and his capacity to think and reason proportionally. As part of our investigation we explored several questions including 'How necessary is it that a child be able to think and reason proportionally?' and 'How
important is this skill for the successful understanding of other mathematical concepts?' The paper documents our experiences, describing the many strategies that we used to help this boy improve his capacity to think and reason proportionally. It reports his progress over a period of several weeks, and analyses his learning and his attitude/s to what he was learning. Most importantly this study serves to highlight the important interrelationship between proportional reasoning and other math topics such as trigonometry, percentages and equation solving.

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