Four aspects of strategic change: contributions to children's learning of multiplication

This study reports a longitudinal investigation of French 2nd graders' acquisition of single-digit multiplication skill. Speed, accuracy, and strategy use were assessed 3 times within the year when children learned multiplication. The data showed that improvements in speed and accuracy that generally accompany learning can reflect at least 4 types of specific strategic changes: introduction of new strategies, increasing use of the most efficient existing strategies, more efficient execution of each strategy, and more adaptive choices among strategies. The data also showed substantial continuities in learning: At all 3 points of measurement, children used multiple strategies, used retrieval most often on the same classes of problems, and used repeated addition on the most difficult problems. Stable individual differences were also apparent. The findings supported a number of predictions of Siegler and Shipley's (1995) adaptive strategy choice model. Implications for understanding learning, arithmetic, and strategy choice processes are discussed.