Contemporary trends in education reflect a shift from traditional teacher-centered approaches to more student-centered approaches to learning. Empowering students in their own learning is facilitated by teaching them effective meaning-making strategies that support active participation in their own learning. Making this happen requires using…

An interdisciplinary course centered on mathematical ideas (involving infinity and geometry) is described. The course was developed by the authors, both mathematicians, as a vehicle for engaging students in learning about mathematical ideas that are rarely found in the general undergraduate curriculum. The course was offered to honors students…

This article describes a valuable lesson that university mathematics faculty members learned from fifth grade and middle school teachers in a professional development workshop. The goal of the workshop was to show how models for whole number operations could be linked to models for rational numbers and to connect the traditional algorithms to the…

Some research studies, many of which used quantitative methods, have suggested that graphics calculators can be used to effectively enhance the learning of mathematics. More recently research studies have started to explore students' styles of working as they solve problems with technology. This paper describes the use of a software application…

Lecture is a common presentation style that gives instructors a lot of control over topics and time allocation, but can limit active student participation and learning. This article presents some ideas to increase the level of student involvement in lecture. The examples and suggestions are based on the author's experience as a senior lecturer for…

In a very large Introductory Statistics class, i.e. in a class of more than 300 students, instructors may hesitate to apply active learning techniques, discouraged by the volume of extra work. In this paper two such activities are presented that evoke student involvement in the learning process. The first is group peer teaching and the second is…

Our primary goal is to design a micro world which aspires to research thinking-in-change about distribution. Our premise, in line with a constructivist approach and our prior research, is that thinking about distribution must develop from causal meanings already established. This study reports on a design research study of how students appear to…

This study was designed to find out if (a) the level of performance of selected Jamaican preservice primary teachers on perimeter, area and area-perimeter was satisfactory; (b) there were significant differences in their performance on each of the three concepts based on their gender, cohort, age and mathematical abilities; and (c) there were…

This study, part of a narrative classroom inquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics in a Canadian elementary classroom, emerges from the three years I was a participant-observer in Janine O'Neil's 3rd/4th-grade classroom at Bay Street Community School. Drawing on the curriculum commonplaces of teacher, social milieu, subject matter,…

Many students find the leap from arithmetic to algebra a difficult one to make, and current literature suggests that a number of the common misconceptions held by students arise as a result of the methods which teachers use to present algebra. The abstract nature of algebra makes it difficult for students to grasp; students also struggle with the…

The integration of mathematics and science is a recommended pedagogical strategy made by major reform-based documents. The goal is to enhance learner understandings by recognizing the relationships between the two disciplines. Documented attempts to systematically enact this initiative in teacher preparation remain uncommon. As a result, an…

This study examined awareness of equivalence and relational thinking exhibited by 30 preservice elementary teachers in order to assess their initial preparedness to engage students in these two important aspects of early algebraic reasoning. Findings indicated that preservice teachers collectively demonstrated an awareness of relational thinking…

In this article, data from a study of the mental computation competence of students in grades 3 to 10 are presented. Students responded to mental computation items, presented orally, that included operations applied to fractions, decimals and percents. The data were analysed using Rasch modelling techniques, and a six-level hierarchy of part-whole…

This early childhood training workbook and three accompanying video series provide instruction for early childhood caregivers and teachers in the areas of guidance and discipline, math, and diversity. The video series "Guidance and Discipline" demonstrates the ways in which teachers help children become self disciplined. The three videos…

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of Logo Mathematics Tutorial Two (LMT2) for teaching polygons to minority students. The polygons were chosen to develop a sound foundation for further knowledge and exploration in geometry. The subjects (N=23) were middle and high school students that were trained using LMT2. The subjects…