This case study describes a Q methodology study which captured and analyzed the viewpoints of 45 UK teachers online. The teachers might liken their participation in the study to a "card sort" activity: their relative placement of statement cards revealed their opinions of mastery in mathematics. Factor analysis of the completed sorts…

In 2012, I completed my doctoral study which was positioned in a hermeneutic phenomenological theoretical framework within the interpretive social science mode of inquiry. Through the phenomenological component, I attempted to understand the experiences of secondary school immigrant students in their mathematics classrooms as the phenomena, while…

English schoolchildren do not fare well in international comparisons of mathematical, particularly algebraic, ability. I believe that this is at least partly due to algebra being traditionally taught using only symbols, ignoring the enactive-iconic-symbolic trajectory described by Jerome Bruner, which says that experiencing the way in which…

As part of my PgCert in Higher Education Practice, I undertook a learning and teaching research project into the effect of small group mathematics tutorials on student confidence and academic performance. I chose this project because it related directly to my practice as a higher education lecturer: I regularly supported first year animal science…

We make sense of experiences of our own and others through different forms of stories -- movies, TV dramas, documentaries, books, songs, as well as stories that are told and re-told within our families and cultures. Our experiences are fragmented and happen in different places over the course of our lives. By putting stories together in a plot, we…

Rubrics are commonly used to assess individuals in the field of education. Although rubrics are frequently used as data sources for research studies, the creation and validation of rubrics have not been common experiences for most researchers. There are many practical issues, such as requiring ongoing training by the evaluation team, in order to…

The gender achievement gap, where males demonstrate lower performance in academics, is not fully understood. This research was the first of its kind undertaken in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2012-2013. I employed a mixed-methods design for this research to reduce issues inherent in the use of each type of method, as well as to gather data…

Designing, developing, and implementing a multi-year randomized control trial targeting what works in gifted education mathematics study is challenging, at best. In response to the United States Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences request for proposal, we carefully constructed a mixed-methods study by assembling a diverse…

In this case, I describe a case study I carried out with a class of 5-year-old children. As a primary mathematics teacher-educator, I wished to experience--first hand--teaching mathematics language explicitly, as recommended by many international researchers and also by myself as part of my University courses. The topic taught was subtraction, and…