Background/purpose: Investigation into the misconceptions of preschool students in mathematics and their differences between the ages of 4-5 and 5-6 years old helps form appropriate developmental mathematics teaching programs. However, although several studies have been conducted examining preschoolers' previous knowledge and misconceptions about…

Mathematics is crucial to the educational and vocational success of students. The concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) approach is a method to teach students mathematical concepts. The CRA involves instruction with manipulatives, representations, and numbers only in different lessons (i.e., concrete lessons include manipulatives but not…

Mathematics educators and researchers have advocated for the use of manipulatives to teach mathematics for decades. The purpose of this article is to provide illustrative uses of a readily available manipulative rather than a complete list. From an Australian perspective, Pop-it fidget toys can be used across the mathematics curriculum. This paper…

The inquiry-oriented and cyclic process of action research can lead to the innovative use of technology and instructional strategies to improve teaching practice, particularly for beginning teachers. This action research project examined the impact of the number line and Educreations on second-grade students' verbal and written explanations of…

This article reflects critically on the guidance offered to South African teachers in two canonical texts: the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) and Mathematics teaching and learning framework for South Africa: Teaching mathematics for understanding (TMU). I make explicit my philosophical orientation, and how 'teaching mathematics…

In a cross-sectional study, 160 students in Grades 2, 4, 7, and 11 were interviewed about their reasoning when solving integer addition and subtraction open-number-sentence problems. We applied our previously developed framework for 5 Ways of Reasoning (WoRs) to our data set to describe patterns within and across participant groups. Our analysis…

This chapter focuses on the interaction of two first graders as they attempt to make sense of a particular instructional context for learning negative numbers. The context is one where they move an elevator to a building's floors above and below ground in order to model integer addition and subtraction problems. In particular, the focus of the…

This paper focuses on kindergarten teachers' interactions with young children during mathematical learning activities involving the use of digital tools. We aim to characterise the teachers' roles and actions in these activities and extend considerations of teachers' orchestrations current in the research literature with regard to agency and…

Algorithms and representations have been an important aspect of the work of mathematics, especially for understanding concepts and communicating ideas about concepts and mathematical relationships. They have played a key role in various mathematics standards documents, including the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. However, there have…

The First Grade Pre-Screening is designed to be used at the start of the first grade school year so that teachers can obtain information about their incoming students. This information is intended to give teachers insight about what math and reading skills a student may or may not have at the beginning of the year. The information can aid teachers…