Engaging children in justifying, forming conjectures and generalising is critical to develop their mathematical reasoning. Previous studies have revealed limited opportunities for primary school children to justify their thinking, form conjectures and generalise in mathematics lessons. Forms of justification of Year 3/4 children from three schools…

The findings discussed here are a small part of a larger study entitled, "Encouraging Persistence Maintaining Challenge". The paper reports five teachers' observations of the implementation of a task which was new to them. The teachers were asked to identify aspects of the task which they perceived as challenging for the Year 6 students.…