This study investigated 5- to 7-year-old children's understanding of partitive division tasks using continuous quantities. The children were asked to estimate the relative value of the quotients instead of their absolute values. A progressive increase in children's abilities to deal with the inverse divisor-quotient relationship was observed. Important changes occurred in relation to the type of justification given. There was an increase with age in the percentage of responses accompanied by justifications which focused on the mathematical information relevant to the solution of the task. The results also suggested that the experience of comparing identical share-outs precede and may lead the growth of the children's understanding of the relationships between division terms.
partitive division; continuous quantities; arithmetic
