Children's informal knowledge of physical angle situations

There has been very little research on children's informal knowledge of familiar situations from which the angle concept could be abstracted. The present study investigated 7-year-old children's situated knowledge of turns, slopes, crossings, bends, rebounds and corners, as well as how the children classified angle situations, how they represented each situation using abstract angle models, and how well they recognised the similarity between different angle situations. It was found that children had an excellent knowledge of all situations presented, but that specific features of each situation strongly hindered recognition of the common features which define the angle concept. Implications for teaching are discussed.