• The Mathematical Education
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.249-264
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• 2021

This article is devoted to investigating young learners' understanding of elapsed time from socio-cultural perspectives. The socio-cultural perspective benefits to access and personalize mathematics learning as how to have a mathematical object to be able to realize signifiers with the help of many other mathematical words and mediators. In terms of the realization of signifiers, I analyzed performances on elapsed time tasks of students in Grades 3 (n=115) and interviewed focal students. Quantitative analysis on students' performance identified that students perform differently when the task provided with the analog clock signifier. It suggested that students might think in a different way upon the given signifier even for the same elapsed time, especially when given as the analog clock. Qualitative analysis on focal students' interviews visualized how the students' understanding were different by displaying individual realization trees on elapsed time. The particular location of the analog clock signifier on each realization tree provided a personalized explanation about low performance on the task with analog clock signifier. The finding suggested that the realization of a specific signifier could be a key point in elapsed time understanding. I discussed why a majority of students face difficulty in elapsed time learning indicated analog clock and the advantage of moving elapsed time strands to higher grades in the school mathematics curriculum.