Sampling Perspective when Grasping Learners’ Thoughts in Arithmetic Class: Based on the Aspect of the Description of Concrete Examples of Reflection

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to obtain suggestions from sampling perspectives when grasping learners’ thoughts by collecting examples of the aspect of the learners’ description of reflection. In this paper, we specifically identify the aspects described in the “Examples” section to obtain suggestions on the sampling perspective. For this purpose, using the 5th grade elementary school unit “Volume of a Solid” as a case study, we identified aspects of the “Examples” mainly based on the Strauss & Corbin (1998) version of the grounded theory approach, and compared them with all of the students’ descriptions at each time period to determine the sampling. The viewpoints were then discussed.

As a result, we were able to identify the following types of “Examples”: i) those in which the students themselves came up with specific examples, ii) those in which they used problems or diagrams from the class and changed the numerical values, iii) those in which they showed specific examples of problems from the class, and iv) those in which they did not write anything. The results suggest that the identified aspects can be used as one of the perspectives for sampling.