Resumen de Variation in strategy use across grade level by pattern generalization types

Rabin Mouhayar, Murad Jurdak

• This paper explored variation of strategy use in pattern generalization across different generalization types and across grade level. A test was designed to assess students’ strategy use in pattern generalization tasks. The test was given to a sample of 1232 students from grades 4 to 11 from five schools in Lebanon. The findings of this study showed that the frequency of student strategy use differed according to the generalization type and that the functional and recursive strategies were frequently used in each of the generalization tasks. The use of the recursive strategy decreased, whereas, the use of the functional strategy increased, as the demands of the task changed from constructing a step-by-step solution to finding a general formula. The findings also showed that the use of the recursive strategy increased across grades 4–8 and then it decreased across grades 8–11; whereas the use of the functional strategy increased across grades 4–11.