This article presents a theoretical-didactic perspective on the formation and development of concepts concerning mathematical objects as a result of research on didactic difficulties in dealing with concepts in school. The theoretical foundation that supports the research is based on the contributions of the materialist approach to the theory of…

In response to recent trends in the field of mathematics education, real-world contexts are frequently found in curricula and classrooms across the world. Numerous scholars contend that, in addition to making instruction more engaging and relevant, rich, imaginable contexts can provide a semantic grounding that helps students deeply understand…

This paper aims to shed light on an overlooked but essential aspect of informal reasoning and its radical implication to mathematics education research: Decentralising mathematics. We start to problematise that previous studies on informal reasoning implicitly overfocus on what students infer. Based on Walton's distinction between reasoning and…

The development of the mathematical concept of the infinite, through the reflections that arise from personal notions and perceptions and the analysis of some ideas of Galileo and Cantor, invites us to investigate the relationship between intuition and formalization for the understanding of the said concept. This paper aims to observe and describe…

Earlier approaches to sense-making in mathematics have looked at the ways students comprehend a mathematical concept. Recent research suggests that some students make sense not only of mathematical objects that have a being, but also of objects that have yet to become. In such cases, learning mathematics is not just an act of comprehending a given…

In this study, we present a mathematical analysis distinguishing two conceptions of equivalence: "proportional equivalence" and "unit equivalence." These two conceptions have distinct meanings in relation to equivalent fractions: one is grounded in proportionality, while the other is grounded in equal wholes. We argue that (a)…

This theoretical paper sets forth two "aspects of predication," which describe how students perceive the relationship between a property and an object. We argue these are consequential for how students make sense of discrete mathematics proofs related to the properties and how they construct a logical structure. These aspects of…

Fractions are an imperative skill for students to master to achieve success in future mathematics concepts and classes. Yet many students, especially those experiencing math difficulties and/or characteristics of emotional and behavioral disorders, continue to exit elementary school without a concrete foundation of fractions skills required to…

Due to the learning paradox, students cannot have real difficulty in understanding a mathematical concept that they have not yet understood. There is a gap between real difficulties, directly experienced by students, and illusionary ones, only observed by researchers. This paper aims to offer a critical reflection on our understanding of the term…

"Epistemological justification" is a way of thinking that manifests itself through perturbation-resolution cycles revolving around the question "why and how was a piece of mathematical knowledge conceived?" The paper offers a conceptual framework for constituent elements of epistemological justification. The framework provides:…

Even though there is a great temptation as teachers to share what is known, many are aware of an idea called "rules that expire" (RTE) and have realized the importance of avoiding them. There is evidence that students need to understand mathematical concepts and that merely presenting rules to carry out in a procedural and disconnected…

In this article, I argue that the common practice across many school mathematics curricula of using a variety of different representations of number may diminish the coherence of mathematics for students. Instead, I advocate prioritising a single representation of number (the number line) and applying this repeatedly across diverse content areas.…

In the multivariable calculus course, a standard application of triple integration is to find volumes of bounded regions in R[superscript 3]. In this article, we consider the problem of computing volumes, by way of examples, of regions bounded by planes and quadric surfaces. For illustration, we present the solution to two basic but non-standard…

Teachers and teacher educators have been sharing strategies and resources for implementing mathematics routines in National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) journals for years. A less commonly shared mathematics routine, especially with young learners, is "Clothesline Math" (Shore, 2017, 2018). In this routine, teachers create…

This paper conceptualizes children's mathematical thinking from a materialist perspective on language and mathematics. This perspective considers human and non-human bodies as ontologically equivalent; that is, as both being agentive, vibrant, and animated, thus resisting static representations. This conceptualization is an alternative to the…