The two city districts that made the greatest strides in math on the latest national assessment relied on similar strategies: building students' conceptual math skills and investing in professional development in that subject for elementary and middle school teachers. While administrators in Boston and San Diego say that many factors were at work…

This study examined the influence of nationality, age and gender on Chinese (N=130) and Finnish (N=203) pre-schoolers' number sense. Two highly correlated aspects of number sense were extracted: one reflecting the children's ability to organise and compare quantities (i.e. relational skills), and another pertaining to their ability to operate with…

ProbLab is a probability-and-statistics unit developed at the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling, Northwestern University. Students analyze the combinatorial space of the 9-block, a 3-by-3 grid of squares, in which each square can be either green or blue. All 512 possible 9-blocks are constructed and assembled in a "bar…

This study reports on the algebraic generalisation strategies used by two fifth grade students along with the factors that appeared to influence these strategies. These students were examined over 18 instructional sessions using a teaching experiment methodology. The results highlighted the complex factors that appeared to influence student…

The sport of Ultimate has grown from parking lot fun to international competition in its 35 year existence. As in many sports, the team that scores is subsequently on defense. Thus the probability that a team will score next is dependent on which team has scored most recently. Unlike in many other sports, teams switch ends after each score. Thus…

The practice of students going to the boards to work problems has been a tradition in undergraduate education for over two hundred years. A study was conducted to determine what instructional techniques enabled students to better learn fundamental concepts in mathematics. This study identifies board work as a highly effective instructional…

Created by teachers for teachers, the Math Academy tools and activities included in this booklet were designed to create hands-on activities and a fun learning environment for the teaching of mathematics to the students. This booklet contains the "Math Academy--Let's Go to the Mall! Explorations in Combinatorics," which teachers can use to enhance…

Designed as an avenue of communication for mathematics educators concerned with the views, ideas, and experiences of two-year college students and teachers, this journal contains articles on mathematics exposition and education and regular features presenting book and software reviews, classroom activities, instructor experiences, and math…

The Probability Inquiry Environment (PIE) is being designed as a computer-mediated collaborative inquiry environment to aid middle school students in learning elementary probability. This paper reports on a study in which seventh grade students engaged in probabilistic reasoning while interacting with a preliminary version of PIE. By analyzing the…

This paper addresses the evidence that secondary school students use to imply that they understand something in mathematics. As part of a larger study, an open-ended questionnaire probing several aspects of metacognitive self-knowledge, was administered to students (N=72) in four schools. Two previously identified types of understanding were…

These American Indian standards for mathematics were developed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for use by classroom teachers of American Indian students. They have been closely aligned with the 1989 "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics," national standards currently in use in many BIA-funded schools. Each…

This book has a two-fold purpose. First, it was intended as a description of the development and testing of a primary school fraction program, presently in practice. This project seeks to develop a realistic alternative to the teaching and learning of fractions. The second purpose was to produce a theory on the teaching and learning of fractions…

Problem solving is a main topic in mathematics education, and considerable headway has been made in identifying the processes involved in solving well-formed problems like algebra word problems, mathematical algorithms, and logical puzzles like the Tower of Hanoi. The "Mathnet" format of the SQUARE ONE TV program, however, requires…

This paper reports a study to address two questions concerning children's understanding of average: How do children construct and interpret representativeness within the context of data sets? and How do children think about the mean as a particular mathematical definition and relationship? Twenty-one students (seven each of 4th, 6th, and 8th…

Project Special Elementary Education for the Disadvantaged (SEED) is a nationwide program in which professional mathematicians and scientists from major universities and research corporations teach abstract, conceptually oriented mathematics to full-sized classes of elementary school children on a daily basis as a supplement to their regular…