The guide has 12 main chapters including vision, main principles, aims, common skills of the curriculum, and the suggested assessment methods and techniques. Furthermore, in separate chapters, each learning area (strand) of mathematics by grades is presented according to the topics, learning objectives, suggested ways of instruction, and the specific explanations including cautions for teachers, extracurricular activities, connections with other mathematical strands as well as other subject areas, and examples for assessment of students’ learning. Figure 3 is one of the pages for a 3rd Grade Mathematics Curriculum taken from the guide. It includes the learning expectations for the concept of perimeter and describes how to teach the topic. Explanations are given in the last column. It might provide a better picture for the structure of the guide. The curriculum guide was examined carefully to find out the extent to which the length measurement topic supports students’ understanding. The following steps were followed throughout the study: (1) locating relevant data, (2) developing a framework, (3) analyzing data, and
(4) interpreting the results. During the first step, the measurement learning area in each grade level was reviewed to distinguish the topics for length measurement. Then, each page of length measurement including the learning objectives, suggested activities for instruction, example problems for student assessment, etc. was drawn from the core content of measurement. Following this step, the framework was developed by considering the existing research on students’ understanding of length measurement, the theoretical bases of linear measurement, and the research questions of the study. It specifically includes the concepts and the skills related to linear measurement (e.g. unit iteration, perimeter, measuring with a ruler, etc.) and common student mistakes/misconceptions as listed previously. The document analysis was done in line with the framework. Lastly, data collected were categorized by taking into consideration the research questions of the study. Before presenting the results, it is believed that the general information not only about the Turkish Elementary Mathematics Curriculum but also Measurement Learning Area might be useful starting points for a better understanding.