The act of explaining can help students to develop new understandings of mathematical ideas, construct rules for solving problems, become aware of misunderstandings or a lack of understanding and develop their mathematical communication. Their explanations can also offer opportunities for a teacher to understand more fully what the students are…

This paper presents a study that illustrates how the author and an in service secondary school teacher used basic synchronous computer mediated communications (CMC) technology to help them uncover students' physics preconceptions and thought processes (including their misconceptions and misunderstandings) in a real class setting. In this paper, I…

Background/Context: The theoretical framework of the paper comes from research on problem solving, considered by many to be the essence of mathematics; research on the importance of oral language in learning mathematics; and on the importance of the teacher as the primary instrument of learning mathematics for most students. As a nation, we are…