The purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of elementary school student’s reasoning strategies used in proportional tasks. Three hundred and ninety elementary students were sampled to investigate their reasoning strategies used in Pouring Water Tasks. Results showed that 4 percentage of students used proportional reasoning strategy. By the way, about 80% of students used qualitative guess or additive strategies to solve proportion tasks. Further, about fifth-grade or 11-year-old students began to use proportional reasoning strategy. Also, female and male students’ development of reasoning strategies improved from 1st grade across 5th grade and from 6-year-old across 11-year-old. However, female did not show the improvement of strategy development after 5th-grade of 11-year-old. However, male students showed a continuous improvement after the grade or age. In addition, students showed developmental patterns of spurts and plateau, rather than a linear developmental pattern. The present study also discussed educational implications of this finding in school curriculum.
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