A theoretical model describing young students' (Grade 3) arithmetic-algebraic structure sense was formulated and validated empirically (n = 130), hypothesizing that young students' arithmetic-algebraic structure sense consists of five distinct but correlated factors; structure in numerical equivalence and word-problem modeling, structure in…

George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Forms was first published in 1969. In the fifty years since its publication, it has influenced mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, and sociologists. Its influence on mathematics education has been negligible. In this paper, I present a brief introduction to the theory and its philosophical underpinnings. And I…

The paper presents some reflections and activities developed by researchers and teachers involved in teacher education programs on cultural transposition. The construct of cultural transposition is presented as a condition for decentralizing the didactic practice of a specific cultural context through contact with other didactic practices of…

One of the fundamental topics taught in the microeconomics class is minimizing economic costs. It includes understanding the concept of derivatives and applying them. However, most of the first-year undergraduate students find calculus difficult to understand, which also results in poor knowledge of optimization. We use the method based on the…

Mathematics educators advocate for the use of models as an instructional practice that can potentially aid in building students' understanding of difficult topics. Integers and integer operations are historically problematic for students and are critically important in both arithmetic and the future study of algebra. In this chapter, I explore one…

Why is the use of letters in algebraic expressions and equations--variables--the source of such uncertainty for students and teachers? The authors studied a sixth-grade classroom and observed that students hold many misconceptions about variables. Some students hold an algebraic view of the equal sign. For them, it indicates an equation and…

We present the results of a research project on arithmetic-algebraic thinking that was carried out jointly by a team in Mexico and another in Quebec. The project deals with the concepts of variable and covariation between variables in the sixth grade at the elementary level and the first, second, and third years of secondary school--namely,…

We study here an aspect of an infinite set "P" of multivariate polynomials, the elements of which are associated with the arithmetic-geometric-mean inequality. In particular, we show in this article that there exist infinite subsets of probability "P" for which every element may be expressed as a finite sum of squares of real…

This is the second of a two-part article that presents a theory of unit construction and coordination that underlies radical constructivist empirical studies of student learning ranging from young students' counting strategies to high school students' algebraic reasoning. In Part I, I discussed the formation of arithmetical units and composite…

It is well documented in literature that rational number is an important area of understanding in mathematics. Therefore, it follows that teachers and students need to have an understanding of rational number and related concepts such as fraction multiplication and division. This practitioner reference paper examines models that are important to…

There is a call for enabling students to use a range of efficient mental and written strategies when solving addition and subtraction problems. To do so, students should recognise numerical structures and be able to change a problem to an equivalent problem. The purpose of this article is to suggest an activity to facilitate such understanding in…

The concept of exponents has been shown to be problematic for students, especially when expanding it from the domain of positive whole numbers to that of exponents that are negative and later rational. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the concept of exponentiation as a continuous operation and examines the deficiencies of existing…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] is a global policy organization that includes the United States and about half of the Western Europe countries. It administers international comparison tests, called Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for 15 year-old students in Mathematics and other subjects. I…

This article presents a study that compared the success rates of students in Arithmetic (MTH 02), Algebra I (MTH 03), and Algebra II (MTH 03) when they were offered at Southwest Virginia Community College (SWCC) for three credits versus five credits. The authors' findings showed no significant differences in the success rates of students who were…

This paper surveys the fascinating mathematics of fair division, and provides a suite of examples using basic ideas from algebra, calculus, and probability which can be used to examine and test new and sometimes complex mathematical theories and claims involving fair division. Conversely, the classical cut-and-choose and moving-knife algorithms…