Underprepared College Students’ Understanding of and Misconceptions with Fractions

This study investigated understanding of and misconceptions with fractions in college students enrolled in a remedial mathematics course. Data were collected from 22 college students for one semester. The analysis of 41 fraction problems revealed that participants’ common misconceptions were associated with a lack of understanding of basic definition of fractions, least common denominators/least common multiples, and order of operations. In addition, some students were able to recall the procedures but could not compute fractions accurately due to the misconceptions listed above.