Didactic engineering for teaching of time units in elementary education: the digital clock

Abstract

Introduction. A little addressed topic in research of mathematics education has been the peculiarities in coordination of the subsystem of units day-hour-minute in the teaching of time units. The aim to describe of its students, starting with the identification of processes and confusions. Method. Research based on a qualitative approach describes the implementation results of a didactic engineering designed for the learning of temporal units, using the construction of a digital clock as the main resource. The sample is composed by 67 nine-year-old students from Spain and Chile, which makes it possible to compare the results in both countries, with similar traditions in the teaching of measurement contents. Results. As a conclusion, we point out the need of an in-depth knowledge of the system of time units for the comprehension of the time magnitude, given its non-decimal character. Discussion. Confusions or mistakes come from both arithmetic aspects and strictly verbal ones, by using natural language terms without any specific teaching of such terms.