A Macroscopic-Metacognitive Exploration of Elementary School Students' Perception of the Learning Order for Mathematical Terms

This study explored how 31 upper-elementary school students perceived the learning sequence of 14 key mathematical terms in the ‘Number and Operations’ domain from a macro-metacognitive perspective. Students arranged these terms based on their own criteria and reasoning, thereby revealing their internal conceptual structuring. The analysis revealed that students tended to sequence terms reflecting the inherent hierarchy and interconnections of number concepts at the elementary level, consistently placing ‘natural number’ as foundational and clustering related terms such as those for division and fractions. However, these student-perceived sequences showed notable discrepancies from the textbook's presentation order, particularly concerning the introduction timing of ‘natural number,’ the internal sequencing within specific conceptual clusters, and the placement of ‘decimal’ terms. These findings underscore the dynamic interplay between students' intuitive knowledge structures and the formal curriculum design, providing foundational data for developing learner-centered mathematical vocabulary instruction and curriculum enhancement.