The author is speaking from personal experiences teaching children K-10 (ages 5-16). It sounds like she is documenting her experience teaching these various temporary constructs, and that her experience is that teaching multiplication as repeated addition is a less effective way of teaching it.
> Ironically, this article wants to be very normative about which mathematical intuition is better…
No, the article is not being normative about “which intuition is better,” this is an incorrect reading of the article.
The article is giving advice about how to teach multiplication. Advice that is apparently based on years of experience teaching multiplication.
It’s not uncommon for people to experience teachers who prescribe specific intuitions about math rather than accommodate different intuitions—but the author is not doing that. What she’s doing here is outlining the various ways in which one particular intuition may fail you.
> Ironically, this article wants to be very normative about which mathematical intuition is better…
No, the article is not being normative about “which intuition is better,” this is an incorrect reading of the article.
The article is giving advice about how to teach multiplication. Advice that is apparently based on years of experience teaching multiplication.
It’s not uncommon for people to experience teachers who prescribe specific intuitions about math rather than accommodate different intuitions—but the author is not doing that. What she’s doing here is outlining the various ways in which one particular intuition may fail you.