The participants were 48 children from a middle-class, co-educational Catholic primary
school in suburban Melbourne. The students included 8 from Grade 3, 12 from Grade 4, 19
from Grade 5 and 9 from Grade 6. Information letters and consent forms were sent home to
around 300 students, and then a sample of those students whose parents responded
positively was interviewed. General achievement in mathematics was not a criterion,
although there was clearly a considerable range of levels of mathematical understanding
across the 48 children. Each child was interviewed for around 30 minutes on an assortment
of tasks. No child was asked all questions in the set. The three tasks that will be outlined
are taken from a much larger set of questions within the original interview.