There are some students, more in Japan and Australia than in Thailand, who are able to
adopt relational thinking for the question involving literal symbols, even though they
showed no evidence of relational thinking on the number sentences. These students can
exercise choice; they are able to apply relational strategies when required in the case of the
sentence involving literal symbols. For example, in the Japanese Year 5 and 6 cohort, 37
students obtained 0 on all three groups of number sentences, with 25 of these receiving
either NR or 0 for the question involving literal symbols. Of the remaining 12 students, five
received a score of 1, four a score of 2, and three a score of 3. The competent performances
(Score 2 and Score 3) of these 5 students had not been preceded by any relational thinking
in their work on number sentences. In Australian School 2 in Year 6, of the 15 students
who scored 0 on all three groups of number sentences, 9 of these received either NR or 0,
but three students received a score of 1 on the question involving literal symbols, and a
further three also obtained a score of 2. By Year 7 in Thailand, 11 students classified as SA
(0, 0, 0) on the number sentences achieved scores ranging from 1 to 3 on the question
involving literal symbols.