Asserts that there are numerous advantages to using graphing calculators, including the teaching of higher-level thinking skills and allowing students to draw conclusions about what they are learning. However, mathematics educators face such challenges as teaching students when it is appropriate to use graphing calculators, course-content…

Multiage grouping, based on the belief that children benefit from engaging in learning environments that accommodate at least two age groups, allows for marked improvements in children's enthusiasm for learning mathematics. Children are challenged and stimulated by their interactions with multiage peers, and assessment information indicates they…

Describes how teachers of the gifted can make the study of mathematics dynamic, innovative, and creative through the exploration of problem-solving skills and real-life applications. Math competitions and general academic competitions that include mathematics for elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools are highlighted. (CR)

Describes three labs designed to help students in a first course on ordinary differential equations with three of the most common numerical difficulties they might encounter when solving initial value problems with a numerical software package. The goal of these labs is to help students advance to independent work on common numerical anomalies.…

This article summarizes goals for mathematics achievement for all students and proposes a key model for teaching math to students at-risk of failure. The six teeth of the key are labeled: meaningful, explicit, informal, (de)situational, social, and teacher-specific. The lock pins are engagement, foundations, institutions, transfer, cultural…

Two experiments examined the development of children's understanding of part-whole relations. Found that five- and six-year olds evidenced understanding of part-whole relations, but four-year olds did not. Results support the conclusion that an understanding of the relationship between a superordinate set and the basic-level sets that comprise it…

Navigates through a gopher site and then describes some common ways to use different mathematical gophers to obtain desired information. These skills include finding, reading, and downloading text-based files, searching a database, and downloading software. (AIM)

States that average and below average students' learning styles tend to be more concretely dimensional. Providing developmental students with physical models (e.g. adding and subtracting of integers using two color chips on a number line) helps them to abstract the more complex meanings and ideas of higher mathematical thought. (PGS)

Examines if externally imposed achievement goals influence what children learn from procedural instruction. Third- and 4th-grade children's goals were manipulated toward either learning or performance (N=77). Both initially and after a 2-week period, children who were given either goal were more likely to extend their knowledge beyond the taught…

Discusses the role of parents in fostering numeracy in their preschool children. Considers the importance of numeracy and includes suggestions for promoting numeracy among children ages 3-4 and 5-6 years. (JPB)

Twenty-seven children (ages 7-10) with learning disabilities and 42 controls were tested on three different mathematics tasks. Significantly more controls abstracted composite unit structures suggestive of operational logic on modified nonverbal and associativity of length tasks. On a flash card task, children with learning disabilities achieved…

A study found that among second-grade children with mathematics difficulties (n=49), children with both mathematics and reading difficulties were distinct from children with only mathematics difficulties, with the former being characterized by pervasive deficiencies in mathematical thinking and the latter by more specific deficits in problem…

Reports that most of 13 developmental algebra students interviewed preferred constructing tables of values, or the combination of prose with tables, as symbolic models for additive and unit-rate functional relationships. States that these students achieved greater success rates than those who used only prose in their symbolic modeling attempts.…

Investigated problem-solving methods used by 3 sixth-graders working on a variety of mathematics problems over the school year. Found that the students used different strategies: one used visual strategies, one a more verbal approach, and the third a combination of the two. Over time, all three moved toward more nonvisual, verbal/analytic forms of…

First of three experiments compared third graders who had studied worked, two-step arithmetic word problems to those learning through conventional problem solving. The former grouped showed superior test performance. In experiments two and three, children presented with integrated worked examples outperformed those presented with split-source…