For many adult learners, fractions, decimals, and percents can be difficult to understand, and the traditional instructional approach may be ineffective. Often, learners will state that they can “do” one or two of these representations, but that they are no good at the others. One possible remedy to the common misconception that fractions, decimals, and percents are more different than alike is to introduce the relationships first, then work with the skills and other concepts necessary for mastery. Connections to prior knowledge and the real world, may help learners to see fraction concepts, such as equivalent fractions and the part/whole relationship, more concretely.

Inquiry-based learning revolves around a situation, often real-world, that requires the learners to use logic, reasoning and prior knowledge about the mathematics of the situation to solve the problem presented. Though this may seem backward to some instructors, research indicates that this concrete-to-abstract approach helps to boost learners’ number operations and number sense skills.