ZDM Mathematics Education (2011) 43:617–620
DOI 10.1007/s11858-011-0369-7
EDITORIAL
Learning, teaching, and using measurement:
introduction to the issue
John P. Smith III • Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen
Anne R. Teppo
Accepted: 13 September 2011 / Published online: 24 September 2011
Ó FIZ Karlsruhe 2011
This issue presents a collection of empirical research
reports that have examined different aspects of the learn-
ing, teaching, and use of measurement. The work reported
addresses measurement as an important domain of school
mathematics, including vocational education, and mea-
surement in use in various occupations and workplaces.
The collection is diverse in many ways, as characterized
below. Though the focus of many articles is the measure-
ment of space (length, area, or volume), attention is also
given in some to non-spatial quantities such as time,
weight, and money. The appearance of this issue in ZDM
reflects the concern felt in many countries that measure-
ment is an important elementary mathematical and scien-
tific competence, but one that—as evidence considered
below suggests—appears to be poorly learned. Weak
learning of measurement—particularly of the conceptual
principles that underlie measurement procedures—under-
mines students’ ability to learn and understand more
advanced mathematical and scientific content and hence
their access to important kinds of skilled work—both
professional and not. The research reported in this issue
will not solve that problem. Instead, the issue targets a
more modest goal: That more researchers across the globe
J. P. Smith III (&)
Michigan State University, 509C Erickson Hall,
East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
e-mail: jsmith@msu.edu
M. van den Heuvel-Panhuizen
Utrecht University, Freudenthal Institute,
PO Box 85.170, 3508 AD Utrecht, The Netherlands
e-mail: m.vandenheuvel@fi.uu.nl
A. R. Teppo
PO Box 570, Livingston, MT 59047, USA
e-mail: arteppo@gmail.com
•
will reconsider the importance of measurement (in school
and out), its place in elementary mathematics, and the need
to pursue research that will produce partial answers the
basic question, ‘‘why are we doing so poorly teaching and
learning measurement?’’ We hope these partial answers, as
they assemble, will help curriculum developers design
more potent materials, teachers teach the measurement
content more effectively, and assessment professionals
develop more revealing assessments of learning.
In this introduction, we seek to orient the reader to the
collected articles in two ways. First, we briefly review
some of the issues that make measurement ‘‘basic and
fundamental’’ content in mathematics and science, in order
to orient and frame the inquiries reported in the articles.
We also identify some of the principal themes pursued and
central results reported in the articles. While this overview
is approximate, leaving out important messages particular
to individual articles, it is offered to the reader as a partial
‘‘roadmap’’ to the issue—and as motivation to explore
further.
1 Why is measurement important content
in elementary mathematics?
Measurement, the coordination of continuous quantity and
number, has a long-standing and important place in
mathematics. Spatial measurement, the coordination of
space and number, dates from human kind’s initial efforts
to understand and master the physical world (Lehrer,
2003). Though many countries expect elementary mathe-
matics curriculum and teaching to support students’ mea-
surement learning, typically beginning with length,
measurement is even more fundamental to the content and
practice of science (Michaels, Shouse, & Schweingruber,
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2008). In both mathematics and science, the measurement
of tangible and directly experienced quantities (e.g., mass/
weight, length, volume/capacity) leads quickly to the
measurement and study of composite quantities in both
mathematics (e.g., speed as a rate) and science (e.g., den-
sity, force). For these reasons, measurement is a founda-
tional competence for all fields and careers that build upon
mathematical and scientific knowledge. Also, measurement
may be unique in its inherent meaningfulness among
mathematical topics. Where the hallmark of mathematics is
the abstraction of structure from patterns observed in the
physical and social world (Steen, 1990), measurement—
particularly spatial measurement—remains strongly con-
nected to the measurer’s physical world. For that reason,
measurement is among the most sensible, contextually
situated, and practical domains of mathematics for
students.
But as a growing body of research has indicated (Baturo
& Nason, 1996; Chappell & Thompson, 1999; Clements &
Bright, 2003; Irwin, Vistro-Yu, & Ell, 2004; Zacharos,
2006), measurement is poorly learned in school classrooms
in many countries. There is also evidence that elementary
teachers who are responsible for guiding students’ mea-
surement learning struggle with shallow understanding
themselves (Menon, 1998; Simon & Blume, 1994). The
interpretations offered by researchers examining these
results share a common theme: Students perform relatively
well on well-practiced tasks and very poorly on tasks that
are conceptually simple but frame measurement in non-
standard ways. Students around the world, it seems, have
been successful learning the standard procedures of mea-
surement (the typical focus of classroom instruction)
without learning the conceptual principles that stand behind
and justify those procedures (Irwin, Vistro-Yu, & Ell, 2004;
Stephan & Clements, 2003). Factors related to curricular
content and teachers’ knowledge and instructional practices
have been suggested as root causes (Menon, 1998).
In at least some countries, this pattern of poor learning is
also the result of less classroom attention to the measure-
ment of continuous quantities than to developing students’
understanding of base-10 number and arithmetic operations.
Weaker attention to measurement is more than a difference
in instructional time and textbook pages. Number is built on
the foundation of counting discrete quantities—collections
of objects that are physically separated. By contrast, mea-
surement addresses questions of ‘‘how much?’’ and ‘‘how
much more?’’ for initially continuous quantities—typically
length, time, and volume/capacity in the early grades. In
measurement, a continuous quantity becomes discrete when
we choose a suitable unit and iterate that unit to determine
the number of copies required to exhaust the quantity. Its
measure is the count of those units.
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J. P. Smith III et al.
The predominant attention to discrete quantities,
counting, and number, place value, and the arithmetic of
whole numbers over the measurement of continuous
quantities appears to contribute to students’ challenges in
learning measurement. Not only do they suffer from lim-
ited time on measurement tasks, but they also apply a
discrete quantity orientation to measurement tools and
representations of space, e.g., counting marks on rulers to
determine the lengths of objects and counting dots on grid
paper to determine the area of shapes (Blume, Galindo &
Walcott, 2007; Kamii & Kysh, 2006; Nunes & Bryant,
1996). Moreover, they are also ill-prepared to draw on
continuous quantities, especially spatial quantities, when
more advanced mathematical topics, such as multiplication
and division of rational numbers, call for them. Similarly,
the coordination of discrete and continuous quantity nec-
essary to achieve a deep understanding of calculus is dif-
ficult to navigate when students’ knowledge of continuous
quantities and measurement is weak.
When students move into skilled work or technical
careers, measurement remains ubiquitous, but often
removed from view and direct physical activity. Techno-
logical interfaces and systems produce measures of quan-
tities that are central to work enterprises, but in ways that
introduce many layers of intermediate process and com-
putation between the workers and the measured quantity.
The embedding of measurement processes in complex
technological systems raises the importance of measure-
ment knowledge in workers who use these systems and at
the same time creates substantial challenges for workers’
interpretation of the measurements these systems produce.
2 What aspects of teaching, learning, and using
measurement are explored in the issue?
The ten articles that comprise this issue collectively rep-
resent a diverse set of theoretical and methodological
approaches, phenomena under study (e.g., curriculum,
assessment, student thinking, teaching, workplace prac-
tices), national contexts, and central themes and results.
There are large-scale empirical analyses of student
achievement, intensive qualitative analyses of the thinking
of small numbers of students, and experiments that com-
pare student outcomes from different instructional experi-
ences. There are analyses of the written curriculum and
classroom-based studies that focus on the ‘‘enacted’’ cur-
riculum—how the teaching of measurement actually
unfolds. And there are two studies that replace classrooms
with workplaces to examine how measurement practices
are carried out in support of productive work. The articles
are ordered roughly by the age of the learners reported in
Learning, teaching, and using measurement
the articles, from the beginning to the end of schooling and
then into the workforce.
But among these different analyses, some commonali-
ties are evident. These are not the only meaningful con-
nections that can be drawn between two or more articles,
but they are worthy of note.
Assessing achievement and characterizing measurement
knowledge Given the pattern of poor achievement and
learning around the globe, it is not surprising that
researchers have looked more carefully at what is learned
(and not) and when it is learned. The Marja van den
Heuvel-Panhuizen and Iliada Elia article, for example,
reports on the particular competencies of length measure-
ment mastered by kindergartners and on the efficacy of
reading them picture books highlighting length measure-
ment to develop these competences. They also investigated
the components of these children’s length measurement
performance. Research to assess measurement achievement
requires the analysis of different categorizations of mea-
surement knowledge and items to assess that knowledge,
either prior to or after assessment. Such analysis is also
shown in the articles authored by Jasmin Hanninghofer and
colleagues and by KoSze Lee and John Smith. Hanni-
nghofer and colleagues’ analysis of German primary school
students’ responses to measurement items led them to
replace a standards-based items classification with a more
effective distinction between instrumental knowledge and
measurement sense. Lee and Smith applied the tripartite
distinction between conceptual, procedural, and conven-
tional knowledge to the textual treatment of length mea-
surement in two countries, revealing a strong emphasis on
measurement procedures in both.
Measurement in relation to other mathematical domains
In most elementary mathematics textbooks, measurement
is a specific topic area, taught beside but in less depth than
base-10 number and arithmetic. This view follows and may
strengthen the separation between discrete and continuous
quantities outlined above. An alternative approach sees
measurement of continuous quantities as a suitable, even
desirable entry point into other mathematical topics areas,
including number and operations. Richard Lehrer and
colleagues show how length measurement can serve as an
entry point for meaningful work in statistics that focuses on
the key constructs of variation and measures of variation.
The work reported by Jeffrey Barrett and colleagues
illustrates how the comparison of spatial quantities can
support the development of notions of ratio and eventually
algebraic reasoning. Arthur Bakker and colleagues’ anal-
ysis of measurement competencies in a variety of skilled
occupations also reveals an intimate relation between
measurement and knowledge and reasoning in other
mathematical domains.
619
Learning trajectories for measurement As the collected
international body of research on students’ achievements
and struggles in learning measurement continues to grow,
in number and depth, some researchers have begun to
develop multi-year learning pathways (or trajectories) that
characterize the nature of students’ progress from initial to
more sophisticated understandings (Sarama & Clements,
2009; Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Buys, 2008). Julie
Sarama and colleagues’ article and the Barrett et al. article
report such learning trajectories, provide empirical support
for them, and show how these trajectories have been
revised to accommodate empirical testing. Sarama et al.
discuss length measurement in the early years; Barrett et al.
investigate length and area measurement across the ele-
mentary years. While many studies (including some in this
issue) target measurement of a single quantity, the Barrett
et al. article provides evidence for an educational approach
that attends to common conceptual issues that appear
across quantities.
Estimation in measurement Curriculum and instruction in
measurement typically focus on the use of physical and
computational tools to produce relatively exact measures.
But many everyday situations where measurement is nee-
ded and/or useful either require or naturally call for esti-
mation processes that produce rough and inexact
measures—suitable to the measurer’s needs. Two articles
explore the nature of estimation processes in length mea-
surement. Kuo-Liang Chang and colleagues’ article shows
how the presentation of length estimation tasks in US
textbooks structure some parts of the estimation process for
students, while leaving others open to teachers’ and stu-
dents’ interpretation and decision. The partially open
character of estimation tasks creates both opportunities and
potential pitfalls for learning. Zahra Gooya and colleagues’
study of Iranian secondary students’ methods for estimat-
ing lengths in familiar physical contexts shows the indi-
vidual and inventive character of their estimates that
combine the visual application of personal units with fea-
tures of the physical situation.
Measurement in the workplace Measurement, especially
the measurement of space, is a common component of
work in many skilled, non-professional occupations
(Millroy, 1992; Masingila, 1994; Smith, 2002). Educators
cite use in the world as a principal motivation for learning
to measure and understanding measurement. But as both
articles in this issue that address measurement at work
show clearly, the measurement skills that are taught and
valued in school are quite different from those used and
valued in many workplaces. One common thread reported
in the articles from Philip Kent and colleagues and Arthur
Bakker and colleagues is that measurement at work is
mediated by digital technologies that separate the measurer
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and the measured material much more so than in schools.
The Bakker et al. article shows the demand for measure-
ment can be uneven across occupational categories and
how complex it can be when it appears. The case studies
reported by Kent and colleagues clearly show that mea-
surement is valued as one, but only one component in
workplace decisions that aim to optimize production pro-
cesses. That is, measurement is an activity that appears in
much more complex reasoning and problem solving con-
texts than is usually the case in school.
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