To improve access to STEM curriculum, an activity was planned that presents the opportunity to design and build using gears and other tools. In this challenge, preservice elementary school teachers were asked to mathematically analyze gears and create an amusement park ride that uses gears to spin. Although this lesson was implemented with…

Parents can positively impact children's learning of mathematics. To productively engage families in the learning process, teachers must support such interpersonal relationships. The author describes the investigative work of a group of teacher candidates as they sought to attain such understanding. Eighteen preservice teachers, who were…

Kalchman describes and discusses preservice teachers' changing views of what it means to know and do mathematics both inside and outside the classroom walls. The context for change is a weekly assignment for methods students to describe and solve mathematical problems in situations that they confront in day-to-day life. The assignment supports…

This article discusses the difficulties preservice teachers experience when they try to make sense of the standard long-division algorithm, describes a realistic context that we have found productive in helping our students think about why the algorithm works and the role of place value in the algorithm, and suggests the applicability of this…