Findings from international assessments present an opportunity to reconsider mathematics education across the grades. If concepts taught in elementary grades lay the foundation for continued study, then children's introduction to school mathematics deserves particular attention. We consider Davydov's theory (1966), which sequences…

Drawing on the work of Gattegno, it is suggested that a powerful way of teaching mathematics is to introduce symbols as relationships between visible or tangible resources. The symbols are abstract (formal) from the beginning and yet there are concrete resources to support their use. Drawing on data from a research project in primary schools in…

To learn means coming to know something new at the end of, or subsequent to, a (learning) process. Because students do not yet know at the beginning of the process what they will know subsequent to the process, they cannot actively orient towards the object of learning. In this article, I propose a phenomenological perspective that theorizes…

In this article, I build on the work of mathematics education researchers (Hackenberg, 2005; Sztajn, 2008) who have used Noddings's (1984) notion of caring to lend insights to the teaching of mathematics. In particular, I retrospectively analyze my actions when I was serving as a mathematics teacher educator seeking to provide professional…

As part of a larger project focused on transforming mathematics education for Aboriginal students in Atlantic Canada, this paper reports on the role of the Mi'kmaw language in mathematics teaching. Examining how mathematical concepts are described in Mi'kmaq gives insight into ways of thinking. Shifting classroom discussions to reflect Mi'kmaw…

In this article, I focus on what can be termed "the domestication of the eye"--that is to say, the lengthy process during which we come to see and recognize things according to "efficient" cultural means. This is the process that converts the eye into a sophisticated intellectual organ--a "theoretician" as Marx put it. In particular, I focus on…

As the end result of metaphysics, the Kantian and constructivist mind is not present in the world but withdrawn into the netherworld of its representations and constructions. First phenomenology then the embodied cognition research showed how there could be no cognition without the human body. There is something unsatisfying and lacking, however,…

Metaphors are a fundamental mechanism we use to make sense of our world. They structure our interpretations of and interactions with ideas, including mathematical ideas. Thus, the sense students make out of mathematical ideas depends upon the metaphor they use to structure their thinking. This paper examines the metaphors used in one fourth-grade…

This communication supports an argument that preservice elementary teachers ought to study number language as part of their mathematics content courses, just as they study relationships between numeration and quantity. In particular, the paper spells out some ways in which number language can be seen as problematic by carefully detailing various…

This paper first reports on the methodology of a study of teacher knowledge for statistics, conducted in a classroom at the primary school level. The methodology included videotaping of a sequence of lessons that involved students in investigating multivariate data sets, followed up by audiotaped interviews with each teacher. These stimulated…