The work that mathematics teachers do is frequently mathematical in nature and different from other professions. Understanding and describing common ways that teachers draw upon their content knowledge in the practice of teaching is important. Building on the descriptions by McCrory et al. ("Journal for Research in Mathematics Education"…

The Encouraging Persistence Maintaining Challenge (EMPC) Project has been working with secondary teachers in Melbourne as they seek to build persistence in students, during work on challenging mathematics tasks. The authors have developed sequences of tasks in various topic areas for Years 7 and 8, which require students to connect different…

Bruner's constructs of learning, specifically the structure of learning, spiral curriculum, and discovery learning, in conjunction with the Cognitive Load Theory, are used to evaluate the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), an inquiry-oriented inductive language arts strategy designed to teach K-6 children phonics and spelling. The PWIM reflects…

Inquiry has been advocated as an effective pedagogical strategy for promoting deep conceptual understanding and more sophisticated scientific thinking by numerous bodies associated with chemistry (and science) education. To allow inquiry to achieve these goals, the teacher must manage the amount of cognitive load experienced by students while they…

The concept of TASC (Thinking Actively in a Social Context) was created by Belle Wallace (Wallace et al., 1993) as a model that can be used to nurture and develop thinking skills. As children work through the TASC wheel, the teacher has a very good opportunity to facilitate explicit conversations about thinking. This allows the children to grow in…