Background: Early childhood education (ECE) has recently been introduced in Zambian government schools, leading to a need to examine the quality of mathematics lessons. Aim: This study focussed on guided play lessons on shapes in pre-mathematics classes and examined how they could be implemented and what children could learn in the class. Setting:…

This study compares the effects of a concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) intervention against a modified CRA-Integrated (CRA-I) intervention using a pretest-posttest design with random assignment of matched pairs to intervention conditions. The researchers designed both interventions to improve participants' understanding of and ability to…

Real world, mathematics-based educational activities provide context for learning and break down barriers to learning in mathematics and science. SpaceMath@NASA (hereafter SpaceMath) provides teachers with real-world math activities in a space context in support of standards, by using current NASA discoveries as a starting point for motivating…

Using the nationally representative sample from the United States in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (N = 7,429 students from 240 schools), the present study examined the effects of student help-seeking behaviors on eight measures of student mathematics achievement. To account for the multilevel structure of the data with…

This researcher has been greatly distressed, as fifth graders year after year have disregarded mental math strategies for the standard algorithm. Mathematically proficient students should be flexible, efficient and accurate when solving mental calculations. This researcher set out to find out how fifth graders' mental math practice improved their…

Writing in mathematics is an essential skill for communication and many technical careers. Research suggests that writing in mathematics often leads to increased understanding and more effective communication. However, writing in mathematics is still underutilized as a method of instruction. Further, many college students practice example-based…

This paper reports on a study conducted with Grade 11 learners as participants, in four public high schools in a rural district of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The central objective was to investigate the mathematical discourses of Grade 11 learners related to the word, algebraic and graphic representations of asymptotes of the…

We discuss how discourse actions can provide students greater access to high quality mathematics. We define discourse actions as what teachers or students say or do to elicit student contributions about a mathematical idea and generate ongoing discussion around student contributions. We provide rubrics and checklists for readers to use.

Developing expertise in professional noticing of students' mathematical thinking takes time and meaningful learning experiences. We used the Lesson"Sketch" platform to create a learning experience for secondary preservice teachers (PSTs) involving an approximation of teaching practice to formatively assess PSTs' noticing skills of…

In this article, the authors discuss one lesson with 20 third-grade students at a public school in a suburban community of the midwestern region of the United States. Because this was the first time implementing the Snowboarding Spins and Flips activity, four teachers were in the room. One was the main teacher of the lesson while the other three…

Every student must have and develop spatial abilities to be successful in learning geometry. The rapid development of technology also allows teachers to use Macromedia Flash as an alternative in developing and improving students' spatial abilities. This study aimed to determine and describe the improvement of the students' spatial ability after…

Many researchers have illustrated the multi-faceted nature of classroom mathematics discussions, but few have demonstrated the effect of discussion on students' assessment performance. We developed and employed a discussion observation instrument in 20 third and fourth grade classrooms in an economically disadvantaged, linguistically diverse…

Four upper secondary school teachers in Iceland were asked to implement a silent video task, intended to support students' understanding of mathematical concepts, with their 17-18 years old students and to give feedback to the researcher developing the task. The task was challenging for teachers because it required them to make a short transition…

The aim of this study is to explore the judgments and reasoning in probabilistic tasks that require comparing two probabilities either with or without introducing an additional degree of uncertainty. The reasoning associated with the task having an additional condition of uncertainty has not been discussed in previous studies. The 66 undergraduate…

The present study focused on the lack of knowledge of the double use of brackets in arithmetic expressions and the difficulty in the operatively of expression for mathematics application at the school level. Learning the other rules and formulas of mathematics involves learning the use of a bracket. Binding is useful in both arithmetic and…