Learning pathways capture the development of competence in a mathematical domain. They have been developed from empirical studies in the areas of mental computation and emergent numeracy concepts. These pathways afford teachers the opportunity to identify students' current levels of understanding, antecedent understandings and the steps that are likely to result in students achieving a more sophisticated level of understanding. A pathway of the skills and knowledge that students acquire in developing conceptual understanding of fraction equivalence was developed through the assessment of 649 students from Grades 3 to 6 attending six primary schools. The assessment, analysis of data and hypothesised pathway for area models are described in this paper. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.) [For the complete proceedings, "Shaping the Future of Mathematics Education. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (33rd, Freemantle, Western Australia, Australia, July 3-7, 2010)," see ED520764.]