To succeed in mathematics middle-years' students must move from additive to multiplicative thinking and from arithmetic calculations to generalised algebraic strategies. If we ask the right questions this progression can be monitored and prompted through fraction tasks. Students' solution strategies for fraction tasks vary from a dependence on…

This paper will focus on two students who depended on diagrammatic representations in both a Fraction Screening Test and in a subsequent Structured Interview. One student attempted to use diagrams, with limited success, to identify the correct relationships, and consequently struggled to generalise her strategies as she responded to the questions…

In this article the authors analyze the written solutions of some first year undergraduate mathematics students from Victorian universities as they answered tutorial exercise questions relating to complex numbers and differentiation. These students had studied at least Mathematics Methods or its equivalent at secondary school. Complex numbers was…