Variation Approach on Semiotic Registers/Sets Using Eastern-Western Abaci in Primary Schools

The paper presents the design and the preliminary feedback of a multimodal tool shaped by the Variation Approach, involving the use of Western, Chinese, and Japanese Abaci and their visualisations during simple computations. The approaches were used to solve different types of tasks. With this purpose we asked to the 60 primary-school students, between the ages of 7 and11 years, to illustrate their solution paths. Based on these preliminary findings, we will show the strengths and weaknesses of the tool for the diagnostic purposes of arithmetic proficiency