The literature has shown that preservice elementary school teachers (PSTs) struggle to adequately attend to a number's multiplicative structure to determine divisibility. This study describes an intervention aimed at strengthening preservice and in-service teachers' procedural knowledge with respect to using a number's prime factorization to…

This paper focuses on children's number fact knowledge from a study that explored the impact of using multiplication and division contexts for developing number understanding with 34 five- and six-year-old children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. After a series of focused lessons, children's knowledge of number facts, including…

The effectiveness of two instructional interventions was investigated in the context of teaching Arithmetic Combinations (ACs) of multiplication and division to students with Learning Disabilities (LD) or Mild Intellectual Disability (MID). The intervention for the control group (LD = 20, MID = 10) was based on principles of effective instruction,…

Fluency in math facts is essential if students are going to be able to work through more complex math processes with ease. Most of my special education students arrived at middle school with limited skills. To help them achieve mastery with their multiplication and division facts, the intervention described in the article was conducted. Most of…

The study explored the effects of a computer-assisted COnceptual Model-based Problem-Solving (COMPS) program on multiplicative word-problem-solving performance of students with learning disabilities or difficulties. The COMPS program emphasizes mathematical modeling with algebraic expressions of relations. Participants were eight fourth and fifth…

This study addressed the problem of why students with learning disabilities in mathematics too often fail to develop multiplicative and divisional concepts/operations. We conducted a constructivist teaching experiment with 12 students (nine 5th and three 4th graders). This report focuses on three students' conceptual progress, particularly on…

Background: Multiplication and division by fractions are among the most troublesome concepts in the elementary mathematics curriculum. Recent studies have shown that preservice elementary teachers in the United States do not have deep understandings of these concepts. Effective ways to improve preservice teachers' conceptual understanding of these…