Mereological Emptiness for the Signed Number Problem

TL;DR

This paper proposes a mereological approach to address primary students' difficulties with negative numbers by leveraging semantic content and natural types to improve understanding and visualization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mereological framework based on semantic content to enhance teaching methods for negative integers in primary education.

Findings

Mereological principles can clarify negative number concepts.

Semantic-based visualization aids student understanding.

The approach offers a new perspective on teaching negative integers.

Abstract

It is well-known (at least in the education research literature) that primary school students face considerable difficulties in the understanding of negative integers (and numbers), related operations and their visualizations. In the present research, a proposal based on mereological principles is advanced towards solving aspects of the problem by the present author. Her proposal builds on the actual semantic content of what is taught expressed in algebraic terms, and natural types that can potentially be an explicit habit.