A challenge for prospective teachers (PTs) is to determine what students know about a topic through asking appropriate questions and being thoughtful about the wording of these questions so as to capture and reframe students' spontaneous mathematical thinking and eventually unriddle the fuzzy boundary of students' complex thinking. This study…

Drawing on research around the utility of worked examples, we examine how 29 first- and 27 third-grade students made sense of integer subtraction worked examples and used those examples to solve similar problems. Students first chose which of three worked examples correctly represented an integer subtraction problem and used the example to solve a…

One of the factors associated with the less than positive mathematics performance of American students could be poorly designed textbooks that fail to facilitate the development of critical mathematical ideas. This study examined two reform-based textbooks (Go math! and Investigations) in reference to essential, mathematical big ideas emphasized…