Seymour Papert (http://www.papert.org/), inventor of Logo in his seminal work Mindstorms (1980) did a very good job on analyzing this phenomena.
Not only he did a great analysis on children but also came up with Logo, one of the best paradigm-changing environments for teaching math.
On his second book, The Children's Machine (1991), almost 11 years later he went deeper into the issue of computer's at schools and what should or shouldn't be taught at school on math lectures. There's a nice section on an experiment involving hat he called "Kitchen Math" which served to evidence that a constructivist approach is inevitably better than memorizing formulas, rules and formal stuff.
I recommend both books to anyone interested in this topic.
Not only he did a great analysis on children but also came up with Logo, one of the best paradigm-changing environments for teaching math.
On his second book, The Children's Machine (1991), almost 11 years later he went deeper into the issue of computer's at schools and what should or shouldn't be taught at school on math lectures. There's a nice section on an experiment involving hat he called "Kitchen Math" which served to evidence that a constructivist approach is inevitably better than memorizing formulas, rules and formal stuff.
I recommend both books to anyone interested in this topic.
Here is a link to an essay written by Dr. Papert in 1996: http://papert.org/articles/AnExplorationintheSpaceofMathemat...