Primary School Students' Understanding of Equation Structure and the Meaning of Equal Sign: A Chinese Sample Study

School of Mathematics and Statistics, Southwest University, Beibei, Chongqing 400715, China; E-mail: 2003yyx@163.com (Received August 18, 2014; Revised November 21, 2014; Accepted November 27, 2014) This paper reports findings from a written assessment which was designed to investigate Chinese primary school students’ understanding of the equal sign and equation structure. The investigation included a sample of 110 Grade 3, 112 Grade 4, and 110 Grade 5 stu-dents from four schools in China. Significant differences were identified among the three grades and no gender differences were found. The majority of Grades 3 and 4 students were found to view the equal sign as a place indicator meaning “write the answer here” or “do something like computation”, that is, holding an operational view of the equal sign. A part of Grade 5 students were found to be able to interpret the equal sign as meaning “the same as”, that is, holding a relational view of the equal sign. In addition, even though it was difficult for Grade 3 students to recognize the underlying structure in arithmetic equation, quite a number of Grades 4 and 5 students were able to recognize the underlying structure on some tasks. Findings in this study suggest that Chinese pri-mary school students demonstrate a relational understanding of the equal sign and a strong structural sense of equations in an earlier grade. Moreover, what found in the study support the argument that students’ understanding of the equal sign is influenced by the context in which the equal sign is presented.