In traditional advanced mathematics lectures the instructor usually provides definitions, theorems, and proofs on the board rather quickly. The students often cannot make sense of these during the lecture as they are busy writing. In order to gain an understanding of the content, an intensive post-class processing on the basis of their notes would…

Literature suggests that students need to be exposed to cognitively demanding tasks (CDT). In this qualitative study, we examined in-service secondary school teachers' challenges in understanding (e.g. recognizing, solving, and designing) and implementing cognitively demanding tasks in mathematics classrooms. Purposive sampling consisted of eleven…

This study examines how sampled Chinese and U.S. third and fourth grade students (N[subscript China] = 167, N[subscript US] = 97) understand the commutative, associative, and distributive properties. These students took both pre- and post-tests conducted at the beginning and end of a school year. Comparisons between students' pre- and post-tests…

In spite of sustained efforts tertiary institutions implement to try and improve student academic performance, the number of students succeeding in first-year mathematics courses remains disturbingly low. For most students, the gap between their mathematical capability and the competencies they are expected and need to develop to function…

Mathematics support in higher education has become increasingly widespread over the past two decades, particularly in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Despite this, reliable evaluation of mathematics support continues to present challenges for those working in this area. One reason is because ideally, properly structured support should function as…