The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (AC:M) prompts consideration of planning processes teachers typically use (as a whole school, in grade levels, and at the classroom level). In order to gain insights into the nature of the planning decisions teachers make, Australian teachers drawn from every state and territory were invited to respond to a…

Teachers are encouraged to immerse their students in rich and engaging learning environments (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2003). One teaching tool that can facilitate the creation of rich learning environments is the interactive whiteboard (IWB) (Baker, 2009). When teaching mathematics, the varied representational aspects of IWBs can…

The mathematical development of children with Down syndrome (DS) is largely uncharted territory and yet the experience of parents and teachers reminds people that children with DS can and do learn mathematics. In this article, the authors describe a study that examines the mathematical development of children with DS, and offer suggestions arising…

The author cites research from students' misconceptions of decimal notation that indicates that many students treat decimals as another whole number to the right of the decimal point. This "whole number thinking" leads some students to believe, in the context of comparing decimals, that "longer is larger" (for example, 0.45 is larger than 0.8…

If numeracy is about improving students' use of mathematics in life, then numeracy education cannot be restricted to the mathematics classroom: students need to apply the mathematics they learn across the curriculum and beyond the classroom. Hence, there is more that educators need to discover about how well students can use mathematics in…

Profiling high numeracy achievement is the South Australian Department of Education and Children's Services component of the Australian Government funded Strategic Numeracy Research and Development Initiative. This article presents the Profiling High Numeracy Achievement Project Team report on the South Australian Department of Education and…

Two project researchers worked collaboratively with 10 Year 3-5 classroom teachers across nine schools in metropolitan and country regions of South Australia to answer the question: "What teaching strategies support all students to improve their numeracy outcome through the construction of meaningful understanding?". The research identified that…

Presents a case study with an at-risk second grade student on counting and numbers. Discusses counting stages that the student went through. (ASK)

Introduces a study on primary school children's reasoning about the concepts of probability and choice. Concludes that relatively few children are sufficiently advanced in their thinking about chance situations to be able to see that different chance situations can have the same probabilistic nature. (ASK)

Describes and analyzes a learning episode in which two children in year 4 interact with each other and their teacher while playing a probability game involving chocolate M&Ms. Children developed key ideas in probability from a game that was designed to produce cognitive conflict. (ASK)

Explores the way children visualize three dimensional shapes. Uses nine assessment tasks involving three dimensional objects to evaluate children's abilities. Indicates that students' visualization ability can be determined and would be an important and essential element in any overall assessment of spatial development. (ASK)

Reports on the findings of a research project involving decimals and students' misconceptions about them. Offers some practical activities that may help children understand decimals better. (ASK)

Tells stories of children in their first year of school (mostly age five) who were using calculators for the first time. Implications are that children's thinking moves from a rough to a more thorough and refined grasp of the whole. Learning mathematics with calculators is more like the learning of language than traditional classroom mathematics.…

Describes the development of a mathematics profile to assess students in terms of intended outcomes. Ideas incorporated into the profile include determining what counts as progress; justifying the curriculum in terms of expected outcome rather than teaching specific curricula; and basing judgments about the success of the system, school, and…

Hypothesizes that exploring the mathematical ideas behind mathematical terms enables children to gain insight into the structure of a number system and provides a basis for powerful playing with this structure. Describes visualizing mathematical ideas for exploring aspects of mathematics. Offers rectangular numbers to link and explore structures…