Chronic illness often goes hand-in-hand with absence from school, and students miss out on learning opportunities at school for extended or accumulative periods of time. Many young people seek to continue their school studies nonetheless. The need to consider viable ways to support them academically arose in the context of a project called…

President Obama has recently raised awareness on the need for our nation to grow a larger pool of students with knowledge in science mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM). Currently, while the number of women pursuing college degrees continues to rise, there remains an under-representation of women in STEM majors across the country.…

Two test items that examined high school students' beliefs of sample size for large populations using the context of opinion polls conducted prior to national and state elections were developed. A trial of the two items with 21 male and 33 female Year 9 students examined their naive understanding of sample size: over half of students chose a…

This paper seeks to establish a research framework for an investigation into the extent to which pupils are able to visualise figural cues in multiple ways within the context of pattern generalisation. Enactivism, along with the constructs of knowledge objectification and figural apprehension, are identified as forming an ideal theoretical…

This study was conducted to determine the views of high school students about proof and these students' levels of proof. Case study method was used in this descriptive study. The data of the study were obtained by conducting a questionnaire which consists of eight open-ended questions to total 125 10th grade students studying in two different…

In mathematics, the generation and validation of new knowledge frequently involves alternating between two major activities: (1) making generalizations; and (2) developing arguments. Engaging students in reasoning-and-proving is a challenging goal, but also an important one for deep learning and sense making in mathematics. In this article, the…

Thanks to technological progress the world becomes more and more complicated. People stand in front of new and difficult problems that need to be solved. These are problems, the solutions of which are not universal, and cannot be learned. Many solutions require specific data that cannot be learned, as new data is part of the ongoing generation of…

In late 2009, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics released "Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making" (NCTM 2009). This new NCTM policy publication is designed to offer guidance for high school mathematics teachers in providing focus and coherence that parallels what "Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is committed to strengthening relations between research and practice and to the development of a coherent knowledge base that is usable in practice. The need to work toward connection and coherence is not unique to the field of mathematics education. Fields such as medicine, software…

To help fifth- through eighth-grade students develop their deductive reasoning skills, the author used a ten-week supplementary curriculum so that students could answer logic questions. The curriculum, a series of lessons built around language-independent logic puzzles, has been used in classrooms of fifth through eighth grades. In most cases,…

Discussions about school mathematics often address the importance of reasoning and proving for building students' understanding of mathematics. However, there is little research examining how teachers enact tasks designed to engage students in justifying and proving in the classroom. This article presents results of a study investigating the…

This article presents the author's story, as a teacher, about building a Math Matters club and discusses why her students arrived at school before first bell to participate enthusiastically. The author's students seemed to have a negative attitude about math. In giving that stirring motivational speech, she apparently overlooked one important…

When students are asked to write original story problems about fractional amounts, it can illustrate their misunderstandings about fractions. Think about the situations students would describe to model 1/2 + 2/3. Three elements, in particular, challenge students: (1) Which of three models (region, or area; measure; or set) is best suited for a…

The authors describe ways in which a history of mathematics course can help prospective teachers of mathematics develop knowledge they will need for teaching. The types of knowledge include content knowledge of mathematics, knowledge of mathematics for teaching, and pedagogical knowledge.

The 2008 presidential election is a great backdrop for analyzing graphs, learning about population distributions, and studying the effect on the electoral voting process. To take advantage of the enthusiasm surrounding the election, the authors conducted two activities in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential elections with several groups…