at this point there was a dramatic view turn. Instead of discussing in terms of avoiding negative differences, which they anticipated would be problematic for the learners, they now considered teaching this. Thus, they reconsidered their view of how to help the learners; from avoiding to confronting. To facilitate learning, however, it was suggested to connect the examples to an every day context which would be familiar to the learners. For example, they suggested to compare the age of two persons differing nine years in age, one will be the younger and the other the older. How you represent that (positive or negative difference) depends on whose perspective you take. For instance: John is 12 and David is 9 years old. Starting with the oldest (12-9=3) you say: "John is 3 years older". If you do it the opposite way (9-12=-3) you say "David is 3 years younger than John". The possibility of using different metaphors like 'longer/shorter', 'smaller/bigger' and so on were discussed. Subtraction as a difference was still meant to be in focus. They considered using another metaphor for negative numbers: debt, as a possible way to show subtraction as difference between two numbers; for instance to give a scenario of two persons sharing their economies (addition) and comparing them (subtraction).