Success in performing the medical calculations required of nurses demands a competency in basic mathematical skills. This competency cannot be assumed of a number of college students and the nursing student is not an exception to this trend. A test was designed to assess basic mathematical competency and administered to two groups of sophomore…

Conceptually, the laboratory approach is based on Maria Montessori's and Jean Piaget's theories that students learn through becoming involved and experiencing mathematics. Teaching them means creating situations where structures can be discovered and where students can verify and relate ideas to objects. Following a discussion of definitions and…

Previous studies were conducted with 14- to 15-year-old students on the nature of the processes they used to solve tasks given the incorrect/buggy/mal-rules. The computer-based Leeds Modelling System (LMS) was implemented and a database of examples, correct and incorrect, or mal-rules had been established which was sufficient to diagnose the…

Five newsletters examine a variety of topics dealing with learning disabilities. Topics include the following: ways to help learning disabled (LD) seniors plan for higher education, transitional college programs, the changing role of neurologists in the field of LD, the place of math in the education of LD students, instructional reasons for LD…

The purpose of this study was to examine the combined effects of student participation and of realistic levels of vagueness terms on student achievement and attitudes. Ninety-six sixth graders from a middle school in Georgia were randomly assigned to one of eight groups defined by possible combinations of two teacher uncertainty conditions, two…

Problem Solving in Mathematics (PSM), a program of problem-solving lessons for grades 4-9, is designed to be integrated into the regular mathematics curriculum. Although the content objectives of the lessons are similar to those of most textbooks, PSM emphasizes problem-solving skills and a variety of instructional strategies which foster the…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and the Center for Mathematics Education of the University of Maryland sponsored a conference to consider the impact of computing on school mathematics. Participants (including mathematics teacher educators, mathematicians, computer scientists, elementary and secondary mathematics teachers, and…

Sixth-grade middle school students (N=91) in four mathematics classes served as subjects in a study designed to: (1) determine if the use of computers as an integral part of instruction would increase mathematics achievement; and (2) explore the impact of computers as an integral part of instruction on other factors (such as student attitudes,…

Data from 32 state assessments in mathematics (conducted in 1984 and earlier) are analyzed in this document. The high degree of variability across the states is stressed, with some of the points of variation in the test development, administration, and analysis process noted. Information is then presented on topics on which students are doing well…

Recent research on solving addition and subtraction word problems has resulted in the construction of theoretical models of children's problem-solving processes. Some of these models have been translated into computer programs. Characteristics and predictions of the theoretical analysis developed by Riley, Greeno, and Heller (1983) are discussed…

This teacher's manual accompanies a mathematics textbook for second graders, written in Portuguese. Developed from objectives set forth by the National Portuguese Materials Development Center, it follows closely the objectives and methodology of major curricula used in schools of the United States. Consideration was given to the Portuguese child's…

This paper raises a series of questions about the nature of classroom instruction, in general, and about mathematics and reading instruction in the lower elementary school grades, in particular. It focuses on such aspects of the social organization of instruction as (1) the diversity of student populations, (2) the motivating force behind…

The emphasis of the activities presented in this monograph is on the mathematics done by students in grades 7 through 12 with the aid of microcomputers. The computer is used as an aid, to calculate, to motivate, to handle information, or to display data. The vital part of each activity is not the computer program listing, but the results of the…

Abstracts of 12 mathematics education research reports and critical comments (by the abstractors) about the reports are provided in this issue of Investigations in Mathematics Education. The reports are: "More Precisely Defining and Measuring the Order-Irrelevance Principle" (Arthur Baroody); "Children's Relative Number Judgments:…

This study examined the value of the computer as an instructional tool in secondary school mathematics (grades 7-12) classrooms. The literature on the subject was reviewed and an annotated bibliography prepared with entries grouped according to effects on: (1) student achievement; (2) student attitudes; (3) teacher attitudes; (4) student learning…