Primary School children’s errors in mathematical division

Children's performance in mathematics is not at satisfactory level in primary and secondary schools in Sri Lanka. Children's mathematical error is one of the main reason for this low achievement. The main objective of this study is to identify the error patterns made in mathematical division, referred to as “division” in this paper, by the primary school children. For this purpose, a paper-pencil test was administered to 1100 children from 24 schools in Colombo district, studying in Grades 4 and 5. Each paper consisted of 50 questions. The students answers were marked by the researcher and the wrong responses were analyzed. 350 children were selected randomly from the 1100 children and interviewed, for an in-depth study in order to identify any error patterns.The errors identified were classified ascareless errors, random errors and systematic errors. Most of the errors identified were systematic errors. Further, the study analyzed the following categories of errors in detail: Recalling error, Direction of operation error, operation sign related error, zero related errors, and concept related errors and incomplete operation errors. A very common error was incomplete operations in division under the category of systematic errors. This study suggests that, teachers have to change their teaching methodologies when they teach mathematics. They have to use the teaching aids (abacus, dines blocks, number cards etc.) to explain the basic concepts of divisions.