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How Quantitative Reasoning Can

Support Graph Understanding In
Algebra
Halil I Tasova

Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for
the Psychology of Mathematics Education. Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson
University.

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Early Algebra, Algebra, and Number Concepts 195

HOW QUANTITATIVE REASONING CAN SUPPORT GRAPH UNDERSTANDING IN

ALGEBRA
Amy Ellis Halil Ibrahim Tasova Brandon Singleton
University of Georgia University of Georgia University of Georgia
amyellis@uga.edu halil.tasova25@uga.edu bksingleton@uga.edu
The construction and interpretation of graphs is a key mathematical activity, particularly at the
middle school level, when students’ experiences form the foundation for their reasoning about
functions and relations. However, research demonstrates that students experience challenges in
interpreting and understanding graphs. One promising avenue is an emphasis on graphs as
representations of quantities varying in tandem. We present a case of two middle-school
students, one who emphasized quantities and their relationships and one who did not. We found
that attention to quantities fostered ratio concepts and supported appropriate slope conceptions.
Keywords: Algebra and Algebraic Thinking, Cognition, Middle School Education
Graphing is a key aspect of mathematical understanding and represents a “critical moment”
in middle school mathematics for its opportunity to foster powerful learning (Leinhardt,
Zaslavsky, & Stein, 1990). However, students experience a number of challenges in
constructing, interpreting and making sense of graphs (e.g., Moore & Thompson, 2015). In
addressing these challenges, researchers have offered several characterizations of students’
understanding of graphs. For instance, Lobato, Rhodenhamel, and Hohensee (2012)
differentiated between understanding slope as a mathematical object (a relationship between
quantities’ values) versus a physical object (a property of visual steepness), which is similar to
Zaslavsky, Sela, and Leron’s (2002) two conceptions of slope, analytic and visual. Moore and
Thompson (2015) distinguished between static and emergent shape thinking, in which the former
involves conceiving of a graph as a shape qua shape, and the latter entails envisioning a graph as
a trace of covariation. In their work, Moore and Thompson (2015) point to the need to support
students’ abilities to make sense of graphs emergently. This is particularly true at the middle-
school level, which is when students are typically introduced to function graphs and develop
graph-related conceptions that will influence their future mathematics experiences. One
potentially promising way to support productive conceptions is to emphasize covariation, in
which students conceive of graphs as a representation of quantities varying in tandem (Moore &
Thompson, 2015). Thus, we investigate the following question: How does attending to covarying
quantities affect middle-school students’ construction and interpretation of graphs? In order
address this question, we present a case study of two students, one who regularly referenced
quantities in graph construction and interpretation and one who did not, and discuss these
students’ resulting conceptions and sense making.

Theoretical Framework: Quantitative and Covariational Reasoning

Thompson (1994) defines a quantity as an individual’s conception of the measurement of an
attribute of an object. It is composed of a conception of an object, an attribute, an appropriate
unit, and a process for assigning a value to the attribute. Speed, area, and length are all attributes
that can be conceived as quantities. When students coordinate the variation in the values of
quantities that change together, this is termed covariational reasoning (Thompson & Carlson,
2017). Covariational reasoning entails tracking either quantity’s value with the explicit
understanding that at every instance, the other quantity also has a corresponding value.

Hodges, T.E., Roy, G. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of
the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education. Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.
Early Algebra, Algebra, and Number Concepts 196

Researchers have characterized students’ reasoning about quantities that change in tandem with
respect to their graphing activities (e.g., Carlson, Jacobs, Coe, Larsen, & Hsu, 2002). This body
of work indicates that students and pre-service teachers benefit from opportunities to use a
covariation perspective when making sense of graph features such as slope, intercept, and root
(e.g., Ayalon, Watson, & Lerman, 2015). We propose that an approach emphasizing covarying
quantities can also be effective in supporting middle-school students’ emerging conceptions of
graphs.

Methods
We conducted a 10-day, 15-hour videotaped teaching experiment (Steffe & Thompson,
2000) with two 7th-grade pre-algebra students, Wesley and Olivia. The first author was the
teacher-researcher. We developed tasks to support a conception of linear growth as a
phenomenon of a constant rate of change, and quadratic growth as a constantly-changing rate of
change. The tasks emphasized these ideas within the contexts of speed and area. The area tasks
presented “growing rectangles”, “growing stair steps”, and “growing triangles” via dynamic
geometry software, in which the students could manipulate the figure by extending the length
and observing the associated growth in area (Figure 1).

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 1. (a) Growing rectangle, (b) stair step, and (c) triangle tasks.
Data sources included video and transcripts of each teaching session and copies of the students’
work. Our analysis relied on the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), and was
guided by an attempt to account for the commonalities and differences in Wesley’s and Olivia’s
graphical thinking. We developed explanatory accounts of these differences based on evidence
from their written work, descriptions of their ideas, their drawings, and their gestures. We then
compared and discussed these explanatory themes as a research team until we reached
consensus.

Results: Quantitative Reasoning Influences Students’ Ratio and Slope Conceptions

Wesley regularly referenced two quantities (area and length) when constructing and
discussing his graphs, while Olivia did not. As an example, the students graphed the relationship
between area with respect to the length of a growing triangle with a length to height ratio of 5 cm
to 2 cm (see Figure 1.c), as well as the area of a rectangle that would sweep out the same total
amount of area after a length of 5 cm (Figure 2). Both students labeled the y-axis “area” and the
x-axis “length”, although this is not shown in the cropped graphs in Figure 2.
Oliva discussed her graph’s shape while Wesley discussed his graph’s constituent quantities.
When describing her graph, Olivia said, “It starts kind of low and then it gradually gets more
curved and then steeper.” Olivia described the visual features of the graph itself and did not
reference the associated quantities of area and length in the growing triangle context. In contrast,
when Wesley explained why the graph of the growing rectangle was straight, he said, “So every
1 cm in length, it’s always going to be 1 cm in area.” For Wesley, the graph represented a trace
of the associated growth between area and length. Olivia did also at times reference the

Hodges, T.E., Roy, G. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of
the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education. Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.
Early Algebra, Algebra, and Number Concepts 197

associated attributes area and length, but in a non-quantified manner, which we discuss below.

Figure 2. Wesley’s (left) and Olivia’s (right) graphs of the growing triangle (in red) and
rectangle (in blue).
We found two major implications of an explicit attention to both quantities: (a) the development
of ratio and rate, and (b) a conception of slope as a ratio. We illustrate these implications through
Olivia and Wesley’s approach to the “two growing rectangles” task, in which the rectangles grew
in length while maintaining the same height (see Figure 1.a). The students observed one growing
rectangle with an unspecified height, and then compared it to a second growing rectangle with a
larger height (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Wesley’s (left) and Olivia’s (right) graphs of the growing rectangles.
Olivia referenced the attributes length and area when explaining why her graphs were linear: “I
sort of pictured it in my head…I knew it would line up because for every length that you’ve
pulled it should be the same amount of area.” Olivia mentally coordinated the two attributes, but
did not quantify them. In contrast, Wesley decided to think of the height as 1 meter: “If you drag
it out 1 meter, so that’s the length is 1 meter and the height is 1 meter, and then to find the area
you actually times the length by the height which is 1 times 1 is 1 square meter actually.” When
explaining why the graph of the second rectangle was steeper than the first, Wesley said, “The
height is bigger than 1 meter now, then for every length that you pull it 1 meter, it gets more area
[than before].” Olivia, in contrast, explained, “The steeper it is, the longer height of the wall it
is”, where “wall” meant the height of the rectangle.
For Olivia, the slope of her graphs represented one attribute, area, rather than a ratio of area
to length. This attention to one attribute also encouraged Olivia to rely on thematic associations
(Moore & Thompson, 2015) when considering a graph’s slope. Namely, a feature of the graph,
such as constant slope, represented a quality of the motion she observed when a rectangle grew,
which she described as “consistent”. For instance, Olivia justified a constant slope for a growing
rectangle graph by stating, “It went consistently as like a straight line”, and “The rectangle, it
grew at a consistent rate.” The association between “consistent” growth and a constant slope also
resulted in Olivia initially graphing the area versus length of a growing triangle as a straight line
rather than a curve. Her justification was similar in this case: “Mine is going up consistently.”
Wesley, in contrast, described slope as the ratio of two quantities: “[Slope] means the area
covered in a certain length.”

Hodges, T.E., Roy, G. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of
the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education. Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.
Early Algebra, Algebra, and Number Concepts 198

Both students frequently created a standard unit for length so that they could compare
amounts of area across uniform intervals of length. For Olivia, this process reduced her attention
to one attribute, area. In contrast, Wesley attended to both quantities, and created unit ratios. This
was evident in his decision to consider the area of the rectangles from Figure 2 in relation to 1
meter of length. In another case, Wesley explained his linear graph of a growing rectangle by
remarking, “The height is 1 cm. So, every time it’s pulled out 1 cm, the area gets greater by 1 cm
squared.” Wesley could also conceive of this as a multiplicative comparison; for instance, for a
4-cm high rectangle, he explained, “To get how much the area accumulates by, you do x [an
unknown length] times 4.” When considering growing triangles, Wesley also compared amounts
of area accumulated per a standard unit of length, and the unit remained explicit: “Every inch it
goes it, like, it goes, it covers more area for that inch so it keeps getting steeper and steeper.”

Discussion
Explicit attention to both quantities and a coordinated change in quantities offered
meaningful affordances for the creation of unit ratios, the understanding of slope as a ratio, and
the ability to conceive of a graph as a representation of coordinated change. Given students’
difficulties in conceiving slope as a ratio-of-change (e.g., Lobato et al., 2012), the case of Wesley
and Olivia suggests that an emphasis on quantitative reasoning can be a productive route towards
meaningful sense-making with graphs. However, simply relying on the use of quantitatively-rich
contexts is not sufficient; it does not guarantee that students will attend to both quantities or
develop images of coordinated change. Teachers should therefore encourage students to attend to
both quantities represented in graphs, to make that attention explicit in their language, and to ask
questions that require students to coordinate variation in quantities.

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Hodges, T.E., Roy, G. J., & Tyminski, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). Proceedings of the 40th annual meeting of
the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics
Education. Greenville, SC: University of South Carolina & Clemson University.