Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to examine first-grade students’ understanding of subtraction scenes by using a problem-construction task in addition to the word problems used in previous studies. In Study 1 (N=110), students were simultaneously provided the equation “6-2=?” and an illustration (Change, Group, or Compare), and required to generate a math story corresponding to the information provided. The results indicated that the pupils’ scores were lower for the Group and Compare scenes than for the Change scene, and that the types of errors differed across scenes. With the Group scene, the students tended to generate stories that corresponded to the equation, but not to the illustration, whereas for the Compare scene, their stories corresponded either to the equation or to the illustration. These results were confirmed in Study 2 (N=109), which was conducted 4 months later. The present results suggest that pupils had difficulty in understanding the part-whole relation shown in the illustration of the Group scene, whereas in the Compare scene, they had difficulty considering the relation between the equation and the illustration.
