The purpose of this Executive Position Paper is to examine the ways in which teachers learn to implement a new mathematics curriculum. The four case study teachers described in this paper were in their first and second year of teaching the "Investigations" curriculum. In the course of learning to teach with "Investigations," the teachers were…

"The Montessori Observer" is mailed four times each year, in March, May, September and November, to Society members throughout the world. The purpose is to provide news and information about the Society's work in Montessori education, and to extend awareness of Montessori principles throughout the world. This issue contains a feature…

This article, by the author of "Why Johnny Can't Add," finds the New Math to be a failure as an instructional method since it is based on a reliance on artificial, complicated axioms that were invented to satisfy the needs of professional mathematicians, not students. (JA)

Prime numbers play an extremely important role in modern mathematics. Apart from still being the object of intense research activity, their applications in banking and security underline a key phenomenon: in the modern world, useful applications of mathematics often come from very "pure" abstract theories. Curiously, despite their…

Goals and objectives underlying mathematics instruction are discussed. (DT)

It was hypothesized that a supplemental unit in mathematical proof would increase students' chances of success in linear algebra. (Authors/JA)

Choosing challenging problems to facilitate student learning of new mathematics is a difficult task so by using open-ended problems with prospective mathematics teachers, the potential solution characteristics were studied. It is shown that considering the conceptual diversity of solutions helps students develop a better sense of different…

There are two main claims in this article. First, that the classic pillars of engineering education, namely, traditional mathematics and differential equations, are merely a particular, if not old-fashioned, representation of a broader mathematical vision, which spans from Turing machine programming and symbolic productions sets to sub-symbolic…

Reviews some major tenets of the new math as it was originally intended and then examines what went wrong with the new math revolution. (MP)

We analyze probability content within middle grades (6, 7, and 8) mathematics textbooks from a historical perspective. Two series, one popular and the other alternative, from four recent eras of mathematics education (New Math, Back to Basics, Problem Solving, and Standards) were analyzed using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (Stein, Smith,…