This paper explores the changing conditions of the Swedish minority in bilingual Finland. It describes the framework for Finland's bilingualism and the present situation of the Swedish minority in Finland. It concludes with a discussion of the recent debate in Finland about whether the increased use of languages other than L1 is to be seen as a…

Participants at the Summer Institute Pattern Exploration: Integration Math and Science in the Middle Grades used and developed a method treat arithmetic, algebra and geometry as one entity. The use of iterative geometric constructions is seen to reinforce the concepts of exponents, ratios and algebraic expressions for the nth stage of the…

Working memory has been implicated in the early acquisition of arithmetic skill, but the relations among different components of working memory, performance on different types of arithmetic problems, and development have not been explored. Preschool and Grade 1 children completed measures of phonological, visual-spatial, and central executive…

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth-grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., 5 + 4 + 9 + 5 = ?) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., 4 + 3 + 6 = 4 + ? or 6 + 4 + 5 = ? + 5). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed…

This article considers skills and abilities of young children with number in the areas of cardinality and ordinality. Responses to number tasks by a sample of 3- and 4-year-old children are described to outline their differing approaches to determining the numerosity of a set, and to establish their application of ordinality language to describe…

In this article, the author explores the concept of "moving one place to the left." A recent investigation by Thompson and Bramald explored the relationship between young children's understanding of place value and their ability to add two-digit numbers. The study took the form of a series of one-to-one interviews with a sample of 144 children…

Two strands of research motivate this study. One is the interest in school students' development of understanding of the concept of average, historically part of the mathematics curriculum and prominent in the statistics curriculum introduced in the early 1990s. The other is the belief of some educators that students learn meaningfully when…

This article describes a multisensory method for teaching students how to multiply and divide as well as add and subtract integers. The author uses sidewalk chalk and the underlying concept of integers to physically and mentally engage students in understanding the concepts of integers, making connections, and developing computational fluency.…

This classroom scholarship report presents a group of elementary students' experiences learning the traditional long division algorithm. The traditional long division algorithm is often taught mechanically, resulting in the student's performance of step-by-step procedures with no or weak understanding of the concept. While noting some initial…

Mathematical tasks, centered on arithmetic word problems, are discussed as the basis of an approach to facilitate preservice elementary teachers' development of mathematical knowledge for teaching arithmetic operations. The approach consists of three groups of tasks that allow students to reflect on their initial knowledge, explore arithmetic word…

Working memory (WM) has been associated with the acquisition of arithmetic skills, however, the components of WM that underlie this acquisition have not been explored. This study explored the contribution of two WM systems (the phonological loop and the central executive) to mathematical performance in young children. The results showed that a…

Forty-five children with mathematics learning disabilities, with and without comorbid reading disabilities, were compared to 45 normally achieving peers in tasks assessing basic numerical skills. Children with mathematics disabilities were only impaired when comparing Arabic digits (i.e., symbolic number magnitude) but not when comparing…

This study assesses the prevalence of combined reading and arithmetic disabilities in 799 Dutch schoolchildren using standardized school achievement tests. Scores of arithmetic, word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling of children in fourth and fifth grade were used. The main interest involved the co-occurrence of word recognition and…

Students have continued to perform poorly in KCSE examinations in certain mathematics topics taught in secondary schools in Kenya. One such topic is commercial arithmetic. Successful teaching of mathematics depends partly on correct use of teaching methods in classroom settings. This study sought to examine how the use of advance organisers during…

The present study examines the effect of three different structured methods, traditional, independent and problem-solving, of teaching children arithmetic in the beginning of 7th grade in Sweden, age 13 years. The progress made by these students is presented by measures of their arithmetic ability, calculation and quantitative concept, as well as…