Students’ understanding of division

Developing a good understanding of division is important. It is central to many maths topics covered in the secondary school, such as fraction, ratio, probability, statistics, and functions. Not surprisingly, more than 65% of the problems in the last GCSE maths exam involved division (Edexel, 2016). Unfortunately, the concept of division is often not fully understood by the students. Especially difficult are division problems where a number is divided by a larger number (e.g., 2 ÷ 9 = ?). This difficulty is problematic: as maths become more advanced, this type of division becomes more common. In high school maths, physic and chemistry, problems that involve dividing by a larger number are virtually as frequent as problems that involve dividing by a smaller number. In the talk, I will present new findings exploring the nature of students’ difficulty understanding division by a larger number, and I will discuss how this important skill could be improved.