This report summarizes the findings across two case studies conducted as part of WestEd's evaluation of the California Statewide Early Math Initiative (CAEMI). The case studies aimed to understand the planning and implementation of professional learning and coaching in local communities. They also examined changes in educators' math knowledge,…

Practical problems that use mathematical concepts are among the highlights of any mathematics class, for better and for worse. Teachers are thrilled to show applications of new theoretical ideas, whereas most students dread "word problems." This article presents a sequence of three activities designed to get students to think about…

This study investigated the sets of mental computation strategies used by prospective elementary teachers to compute sums and differences of whole numbers. In the context of an intervention designed to improve the number sense of prospective elementary teachers, participants were interviewed pre/post, and their mental computation strategies were…

Mathematical ideas from number theory, group theory, dynamical systems, and computer science have often been used to explain card tricks. Conversely, playing cards have been often used to illustrate the mathematical concepts of probability distributions and group theory. In this paper, we describe how the 21-card trick may be used to illustrate…

Scaffolding is defined as help that can assist students to solve problems or understand concepts that were not able to complete independently. In modern times, the concept of technology-based Scaffolding in learning has developed. In this study an educational game called "Telolet" was designed with the aim of providing Scaffolding to…

The purpose of this research was to determine strategies used by 8th grade students in Number Sense problems. This was a case study of 28 8th grade students at three similar secondary schools in a city centre south of Turkey. A Number Sense test consisting of 25 items designed according to five main Number Sense components was used as a data…

We explore the transition from school to university through a commognitive (Sfard 2008) analysis of twenty-two students' examination scripts from the end of year examination of a first year, year-long module on Sets, Numbers, Proofs and Probability in a UK mathematics department. Our analysis of the scripts relies on a preliminary analysis of the…

Background: This article presents the Afrikaans translation of an originally German diagnostic test for early number concept development. The process of 'importing' a test to South Africa by considering linguistic-, functional-, cultural and metric equivalence is outlined. A theoretical model describes five levels of young children's hierarchical…

Over the past few decades there has been increased interest in how students and teachers think and learn about negative numbers from a variety of perspectives. In particular, there has been debate about when integers should be taught and how to teach them to best support students' learning. This book brings together recent work from researchers to…

Representations of numerical value have been assessed by using bounded (e.g., 0-1,000) and unbounded (e.g., 0-?) number-line tasks, with considerable debate regarding whether 1 or both tasks elicit unique cognitive strategies (e.g., addition or subtraction) and require unique cognitive models. To test this, we examined how well a mixed log-linear…

Research has demonstrated that providing labels helps children notice key features of examples. Much less is known about how different labels impact children's ability to make inferences about the structure underlying mathematical notation. We tested the impact of labeling decimals such as 0.34 using formal place-value labels ("3 tenths and 4…

Rational number understanding is a critical building block for success in more advanced mathematics; however, how rational number magnitudes are conceptualized is not fully understood. In the current study, we used a dual-task working memory (WM) interference paradigm to investigate the dominant type of strategy (i.e., requiring verbal WM…

The rapid growth of the offer of available educational resources raises the issue of their appropriation by teachers. Although the term appropriation is widely used in mathematics education research, there is no clear conceptualization allowing researchers to understand the processes involved. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap by…

The author wants her students to see any new mathematics--fractions, negative numbers, algebra--as logical extensions of what they already know. This article describes two students' efforts to make sense of their conflicting interpretations of 1/2 × -6, both of which were compelling and logical to them. It describes how discussion, constructing…

This article is written to share teaching ideas about using commonly available computer applications--a spreadsheet, "The Geometer's Sketchpad", and "Wolfram Alpha"--to explore three classic and historically significant problems from the probability theory. These ideas stem from the authors' work with prospective economists,…