Abstract
The purposes of this study were to investigate the development of the first and second graders’ concepts of place value. The subjects were students selected from 326 first and 340 second graders of two elementary schools in Taoyuan City. The study used the place value concept test as the examining tool. Questions in the place value concept test were divides into three representation objects: Cuisenaire, coin, and egg. Research results were: (1)The first graders knew number symbol, but almost didn’t understand the meaning of number representation. However, about 50% of the second graders already constructed place value concept of the two-digit number system. (2)Significant performance differences were found among questions with the three representation objects for the first and second graders. In fact, no performance differences were found between questions with coin representation and egg representation. It was more difficult to understand questions in Cuisenaire representation for the first and second graders. To help lower graders’ understanding a number’s place value of tens, coin representation might be more efficient than Cuisenaire representation.