The authors discuss the status of college algebra and related offerings and their relationship to introductory statistics education. They also describe an innovative approach to college algebra that integrates a significant amount of statistical reasoning and concepts and statistical methods as natural applications of basic ideas that are part of…

This article presents a series of open-ended tasks exploring the development of algebraic expressions suitable for exploration with Year 7 students. The tasks use a familiar tool, the hundreds chart, to aid the transition between representational tools and abstract ways of working. The tasks outline a developmental progression of patterns and…

This study investigates students' and adults' performance in judging reasonableness of computational results, namely reflecting on whether these results qualify as acceptable answers to mathematical tasks. Data was gathered via task-based questionnaires from 160 participants, evenly divided between fifth-graders and adults. Their responses to a…

This study examined opportunities provided for preservice secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) to learn reasoning and proof in algebra from the perspective of college instructors. We analyzed interview transcripts of 15 course instructors recruited from three teacher education programs in the United States. We examined the reported opportunities…

This article describes the two types of reasoning in fraction conceptions that students often use, "gap" and "missing piece," and one that the authors aspire their students to reach, "residual." Each of these types of reasoning are underpinned by a different conception of fractions. Students who use "gap…

Effective teaching requires enjoyable classroom tasks aimed at promoting students' learning of mathematics meaningfully, and previous research has demonstrated that the use of origami activities in mathematics classrooms can help achieve that goal. In this article, the authors describe their "LOVE MATH" one-straight-cut letter origami…

In this article, we draw on assemblage theory to investigate how children aged 5 engage with different material surfaces to explore ordinal and relational aspects of number. The children participate in an activity in which they first interact with a strip on the floor, then with a multi-touch iPad application, to work with numbers in expressive…

Classification is a complex process that involves scientific concepts and higher-order mental processes such as abstraction, generalization, and pattern recognition. Even though it is an important competence for understanding the world, dealing with data and information, and solving complex problems, the education system embeds just its simplest…

Background: Utility-value interventions have been shown to promote students' achievement and motivation in mathematics through encouraging them to identify connections between course content and their real lives. To extend the benefits of these interventions, additional research is necessary to test their efficacy in diverse high school contexts,…

The authors describe a lesson--"You Decide"--which challenges students but also provides opportunities for success for those who may struggle. They show how this lesson has been helpful for teachers in revealing some misconceptions that often exist in primary students' thinking. In this article, they share data on the apparent relative…

Young children, especially those from lower-resource communities, often do not have adequate exposure to robust mathematics instruction in preschool. Well-organized and focused early mathematical interventions can help young children develop a foundation of informal mathematics knowledge and lead to greater mathematics knowledge upon entry into…

Young children, especially those from lower-resource communities, often do not have adequate exposure to robust mathematics instruction in preschool. Well-organized and focused early mathematical interventions can help young children develop a foundation of informal mathematics knowledge and lead to greater mathematics knowledge upon entry into…

Educators often argue that students should engage in activities such as conjecturing, proving, and deductive reasoning. The underlying principle is that learning mathematics means doing as mathematicians do. However, "mathematician" implicitly refers to a pure mathematician at university. "The aim of our paper is to critically…

Taking a socio-cultural perspective, in this study we explored the challenges toddlers might face as they practice 1-1 correspondence in the playful context of setting a table, and how different individuals may participate in this playful activity. Findings indicated that toddlers' competence in carrying out one-to-one correspondence may be…

Several articles deal with tilings with squares and dominoes on 2-dimensional boards, but only a few on boards in 3-dimensional space. We examine a tiling problem with coloured cubes and bricks on a (2 × 2 × "n")-board in three dimensions. After a short introduction and the definition of breakability we show a way to get the number of…