Underpinning the Bar Model method with research

This video demonstrates how the Bar Model method fits in contemporary research on learning.

The method is widely used for calculating ratios, proportionality, percentages, but it can also be seen that the visual aspect of the model method fits very much in the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract approach as well. It has its roots in Greeno’s part-whole and comparison models.

In Singapore primary mathematics textbooks these ideas were extended to multiplication and division, as well as fractions, ratios and percentages. The models enable students to visualise the problem structure and make sense of the quantitative relationships in word problems. The Model method, then, can mainly be seen as a problem-solving heuristic that requires children to reflect on how they could accurately represent the information presented in word problems, first in terms of a drawing and then as a series of arithmetic questions.

This method is used in teaching in Singapore but the method is also used worldwide.