Flexible Mental Calculation: Reasoning Profiles of Brazilian Students in Second and Fourth Grades

Achieving cognitive flexibility is an essential mathematical competence for students' deep understanding of arithmetic. One approach to research on cognitive flexibility is the work of The research reported here attempts to replicate important elements of the Rathgeb-Schnierer and Green work in a novel population of Portuguese-speaking elementary students. Eighty-four second and fourthgrade Brazilian students were given a translated version of a guided interview with 12 two-digit addition and subtraction problems. Qualitative and quantitative results indicated (a) that the methodology was robust across cultural and linguistic boundaries and (b) that the flexibility patterns reported by Rathgeb-Schnierer and Green were also found with Brazilian elementary students. Some educational implications of research into cognitive flexibility are discussed.