Children vary widely in their number knowledge by the time they enter kindergarten, and this variation is related to their future academic success. Although talk about number predicts children's early understanding of foundational number concepts, we know little about whether interventions can increase this talk nor about the types of number talk…

Learning the meaning of number words is a lengthy and error-prone process. In this review, we highlight outstanding issues related to current accounts of children's acquisition of symbolic number knowledge. We maintain that, despite the ability to identify and label small numerical quantities, children do not understand initially that number words…

How do children construct a concept of natural numbers? Past research addressing this question has mainly focused on understanding how children come to acquire the cardinality principle. However, at that point children already understand the first number words and have a rudimentary natural number concept in place. The question therefore remains;…

There is growing interest in mathematics learning progressions in early childhood education. Counting is a skill usually developed early in life. The application of the counting principles in early childhood typically entails counting objects. This poses challenges for learning about zero. Indeed, the word "zero" is seldom used in the…

The conceptual development of natural number in preschoolers is well-researched. However, less is known about the conceptual development of zero. Recent studies suggest that children develop an understanding of zero after learning to count. It remains unclear, when a conceptual understanding of "zero" as number word for an empty set…

Analogy is a powerful learning mechanism for children to learn novel, abstract concepts from only limited input, yet also requires cognitive supports. My dissertation sought to propose and examine number lines as a mathematical schema of the number system to facilitate both the development of rational number understanding and analogical reasoning.…

This paper reports on concept images of 38 secondary school mathematics prospective teachers, regarding the evenness of numbers. Written assignments, individual interviews, and lesson transcripts uncover salient, erroneous concept images of even numbers as numbers that are two times "something" (i.e., "2i" is an even number),…

This paper describes the conceptions about complex numbers that a group of university students has, these were built from the application of an activity sequence centered on these numbers. This sequence is based on the APOS theory, some aspects of semiotic representation theory, and the use of digital technology. Particularly, both the general…

Prompting people to estimate climate change numbers before showing them the true value can shift learners' attitudes and conceptions. Yet, interventions created for such a learning experience are not easily accessible to the general public. The purpose of this preregistered study was to address this research gap by developing and testing an openly…

The number one plays a special role in mathematics because it is the identity element in multiplication and division. The present findings, however, indicate that many middle school students do not demonstrate mathematical flexibility representing one as a fraction. Despite possessing explicit knowledge of fraction forms of one (e.g., 95% of…

Existing frameworks of teachers' knowledge required to teach mathematics do not adequately capture the dynamic aspects of knowledge manifested in teaching practice. In this paper, we examine the knowledge demands that arise in situ, in the course of a teacher listening and responding to students' thinking, while teaching the topic of decimal…

In the study reported on here I evaluated the alignment between the Annual National Assessment (ANA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Theoretical perspectives were drawn from the Survey Enacted Curriculum (SEC), while quantitative correlational methods were used to determine the alignment between ANA and TIMSS…

Research study on students' conceptions of irrational numbers before entering university is of importance in order that the construction of the real number field introduced at the university level will have the desired effect. The aim of the present study is to analyze the way students approach the question of the existence of irrational numbers.…

A formative pilot study of a fractions intervention was conducted to address the intervention's potential for improving fifth-grade struggling students' knowledge of fractions, and to identify any logistical or instructional design issues, before scaling up for a randomized control trial. In the first section, we provide details of the formative…

Recent evidence suggests that early natural number knowledge is a predictor of later rational number conceptual knowledge, even though students' difficulties with rational numbers have also been explained by the overuse of natural number concepts--often referred to as the natural number bias. Hannula and Lehtinen ("Learn Instr"…