• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.257-278
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• 2014

The concept of zero(0) and calculations involving 0 are a few of the most difficult topics that students experience in learning mathematics. Therefore, it implies that proper guidance to help students understand the desirable concept of 0 and acquire calculating process involving 0 should be provided when we teach numbers and operations. This study aims to investigate instructional situations in relation to the errors of 0 and to search for efficient ways to teach them based on the previous research. To do this, we analysed elementary mathematics textbooks and workbooks. The result showed that $0{\div}$(a number) and the division of which quotient includes 0 as a middle digit lacked in current textbooks and workbooks. We devised the learning activities of the two topics for 3rd grades and 4th grades, respectively. We expect that the activities will be helpful to devise learning activities of textbook and suggest some implications for teaching the calculations involving 0.

• School Mathematics
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.397-415
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• 2006

This paper is to find out the reason why students often make mistakes with 0 during computation and to get some instructional implication. For this, history of 0 is reviewed and mathematics textbook and workbook are analyzed. History of 0 tells us that the ancients had almost the same problem with 0 as we have. So we can guess children's problems with 0 have a kind of epistemological obstacles. And textbook analysis tells us that there are some instructional problems with 0 in textbooks: method and time of introducing 0, method of introducing computational algorithms, implicit teaching of the number facts with 0, ignoring the problems which can give rise to errors with 0. Finally, As a reult of analysis of Japanese and German textbooks, three instructional implications are induced:(i) emphasis of role of 0 as a place holder in decimal numeration system (ii) explicit and systematic teaching of the process and product of calculation with 0 (iii) giving practice of problems which can give rise to errors with 0 for prevention of systematical errors with 0.