Types of consensus and sharing strategies in small groups in 4 years: “Lacasitos Operation”

Abstract

The meaning of quantity and the problems associated with making decisions about allocations have been part of human history. There have been, and are, many socio-cultural researches about this topic, due to the social problems associated with the decision-making involved. In this article, however, we focus our interest on the study of this type of distributions from a mathematical point of view; more specifically, we intend to analyse the type of consensus and strategies that arise spontaneously when 4-year-old children are faced with the resolution of an non-exact distribution problem for the first time in small groups. To this end, an experiment was carried out with 19 children in the 4-year-old classroom, divided into 5 groups. The results show that the strategies of distribution a priori are associated with aspects as diverse as the colour or the type of grouping done, but a posteriori, after group mediation, the distribution is carried out in an equitable way, prioritizing the criterion associated with the quantity, but proposing different modes of distributions and remainders.