Statistical association between two variables is one of the fundamental statistical ideas in school curricula. Reasoning about statistical association has been deemed one of the most important cognitive activities that humans perform. Students are typically introduced to statistical association through the study of the line of best fit because it…

With rigor outlined in state and Common Core standards and the addition of constructed-response test items to most state tests, math constructed-response questions have become increasingly popular in today's classroom. Although constructed-response problems can present a challenge for students, they do offer a glimpse of students' learning through…

This paper argues that rationality and belief are mutually formative dimensions of school mathematics, where each term is more politically embedded than often depicted in the field of mathematics education research. School mathematics then presents not so much rational mathematical thought distorted by irrational beliefs but rather a particular…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a systematic, explicit, intensive Tier 3 (tertiary) intervention on the mathematics performance of students in second grade with severe mathematics difficulties. A multiple-baseline design across groups of participants showed improved mathematics performance on number and operations…

In many classrooms, students solve problems posed by others--teachers, textbooks, and test materials. These problems typically describe a contrived situation followed by a question about an unknown that students are expected to resolve. Unsurprisingly, many students avoid reading these problems for meaning and instead engage in a suspension of…

Mathematical discourse is often described as abstract and devoid of human presence, yet many school curricula espouse an aim to develop active, creative mathematical problem posers and solvers. The project The Evolution of the Discourse of School Mathematics (EDSM) developed an analytic scheme to investigate the nature of school mathematics…

Students' performances in TIMSS have featured strongly in recent discussions and debates about the quality of mathematical learning outcomes both from teachers and policy makers. Findings of TIMSS trends showed that most high school students in Malaysia continue to perform at less than satisfactory levels, particularly, in tasks that are…

Equality is such an important concept for children to develop. In this article it is argued that a precise definition is needed to ensure that students are provided with a consistent "picture" of what it is that equality really means.

The authors provide a dynamic Ferris wheel computer activity that teachers can use as an instructional tool to help students investigate functions. They use a student's work to illustrate how students can use relationships between quantities to further their thinking about functions.

In this reflective essay, Laurie H. Rubel, Maren Hall-Wieckert, and Vivian Y. Lim present a design heuristic for teaching mathematics for spatial justice (TMSpJ) based on their development of two curricular modules, one about the state lottery and the other about financial services in a city. Spatial tools, including data visualizations on maps…

Requirements for reasoning, explaining, and generalizing mathematical concepts increase as students advance through the educational system; hence, improving overall mathematical proficiency is critical. Mathematical proficiency requires students to interpret quantities and their corresponding relationships during problem-solving tasks as well as…

The article examines how diverse semiotic resources are made available for explaining mathematical terms in a fifth-grade classroom. Situated within the methodological framework developed by conversation analysis and the analysis of embodiment-in-interaction, the study deals with two instances of a classroom episode in each of which participants…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how a set of physical and digital instructional activities can serve as an example space to help further develop a concept image that is aligned with the formal concept definition for the limit of a sequence. In addition, the unique affordances and constraints allowed by using either a physical or…

Research has yet to make measurable progress toward understanding how to help students with math learning disabilities (MLDs) overcome their persistent difficulties. Prior research has traditionally framed MLDs as cognitive deficits and studied these deficits by analyzing failing students' errors. In this paper, we provide an alternative. We…

In the present study we try to highlight prospective mathematics teachers' ability to identify mistakes of sixth grade students related to angle concept. And also we examined prospective mathematics teachers' knowledge of angle concept. Study was carried out with 30 sixth-grade students and 38 prospective mathematics teachers. Sixth grade students…