Why Is Conceptual Understanding Important?

Conceptual understanding is the ability to understand maths, and develop a mathematical way of viewing and justifying the world. It is about the knowledge rather than the strategy used. Conceptual understanding allows students to understand what they are working out and to relating it back to the real world environment to make sense of it. It involves knowing the depth behind the mathematical working and having the background knowledge to understand it. By understanding the depth of the mathematics, they are able to solve problems strategically, and improves the students problem solving ability (Wiggins, 2014). To do this students need to be numerate (Jorgensen & Dole, 2011). Numeracy and Conceptual Understanding work hand and hand; To have
However to understand maths in the long term, the rules being taught need to mean something, which is why conceptual understanding is important. Procedural understanding is based on remembering set rules, however the students may not necessarily understand the procedure they are going through to solve the problem(Tutorial, 2015). Therefore, conceptual is taught rather than procedural today due to children needing to know the understanding behind the rules. Procedural learning however, focussing mainly on learning and memorising these rules and applying to the question. It does not involve learning the deeper insight to rules. This can make it hard to relate this rule to questions with a different layout of questions. Due to this it does not focus on the maths for every day life, which conceptual understanding is related to. Conceptual understanding provides the framework, for the procedural knowledge to be built upon. Meaning that procedural knowledge is knowing what to do, however conceptual knowledge is knowing why you are undergoing the process to get to the answer.