Adult learners preparing for university level study have varying degrees of prior experience, confidence, ability, motivation and need when it comes to mathematical tasks. The development of numeracy skills is a core aspect of university preparation, with many university courses requiring a certain level of mathematical literacy. The standard…

Teachers are experiencing a change in practice, from teacher-centered to student-centered, which affects their work with English learners (ELs) in third through fifth grade mathematics classrooms. The implementation of student-centered discourse practices is essential to orchestrating productive mathematical discussions. However, the common…

Adults return to study mathematics for a range of varied and complex reasons. This article addresses the boundaries and barriers that adult learners of mathematics may have faced in the past, or in the present and the future. Taking into account the impact of our era of rapid technological change, I argue for the importance of developing…

To explore the mathematics learning experiences of those more likely to come from non-traditional educational backgrounds, ten students studying one or two maths units in the Skills for Tertiary Education Preparatory Studies (STEPS) at CQUniversity Australia were interviewed. The aim was to investigate how these students learnt to become…

In her Forum piece, "What's an Adult Numeracy Teacher to Teach? Negotiating the Complexity of Adult Numeracy Instruction," Lynda Ginsburg set the stage of the current problem (poor numeracy levels in American adults) and the bevy of standards, legislation, and new exams that have recently been developed to address it. Ginsburg also…

In this Forum article, Curry focuses on a few ways math and numeracy instructors can assure their students are ready for college and/or a career. For example, when considering the math levels of so many adult learners, teachers might focus on teaching their students how to reason mathematically, and ensure that they have a solid conceptual…

Academically underprepared postsecondary students make up a large proportion of college campuses. Recent estimates indicate that up to 70 percent of incoming students at two-year community colleges and up to 40 percent of incoming students at four-year colleges enroll in developmental courses. There has been some criticism of the effectiveness of…

This pilot case study of two teachers and their learner groups from Adult and Community settings, investigates how numeracy teachers, working with adult learners in discrete numeracy classes, motivate and enable learners to build on their informal skills and apply new learning to their own real-life contexts. Teachers used a range of abstract and…

This action research study explored a constructivist, flipped classroom approach to teaching developmental mathematics. This study was developed in response to a concern regarding a lack of success in developmental mathematics. Throughout the study, adult developmental learners were required to watch video lectures prior to attending class. Class…

Proficiency with fractions serves as a foundation for later mathematics and is critical for learning algebra, which plays a role in college success and lifetime earnings. Yet children often struggle to learn fractions. Educators have argued that a conceptual understanding of fractions involves learning that a fraction represents a magnitude…

Adult developmental mathematics students often work under great pressure to complete the mathematics sequences designed to help them achieve success (Bryk & Treisman, 2010). Results of a teaching experiment demonstrate how the ability to reason can be impeded by flaws in students' mental representations of mathematics. The earnestness of the…

This paper describes application of innovative practice and procedures in relationship to recognized principles and theory of adult education used in college math instruction. Adult learning principles provide the theoretical constructs and foundation of the practice supporting a learner-centered approach to learning. The purpose was to explore…

The purpose of this article was to explore the marginalization of adult mathematics learning within education. The problem is adult education subsumes adult mathematics learning under the umbrella of literacy. Literacy and numeracy compared in terms of their quantities of funding, directed projects, ERIC submissions, and published dissertations.…

This paper presents results of a qualitative study describing classroom participation in pre-college mathematics classes taught by seven successful community college faculty members. The analysis reveals high levels of student participation coupled with low complexity, which can result in detrimental opportunities for students to learn…

Much research (Ma, 1999; Cohen & Leung, 2004; English, 2003) has been done on mathematics education and pre-service teachers with special emphasis on how the mathematics is taught and the psychology of the pre-service teachers. While there is concern among North American mathematicians that mathematics instruction in K-12 grades needs to be…