The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of dynamic mathematics software on the achievement of pre-service mathematics teachers in the topic of polar coordinates and to solicit their opinions about computer-assisted instruction. The study was conducted for 11 weeks with 33 pre-service teachers in the Department of Mathematics…

The purpose of this study is to define teacher views about the difficulties in learning and teaching middle school statistics subjects. To serve this aim, a number of interviews were conducted with 10 middle school maths teachers in 2011-2012 school year in the province of Trabzon. Of the qualitative descriptive research methods, the…

This study looks at the impact of college students' writing on a regular basis about mathematical concepts. Specifically we examine the effect of this practice on performance and attitude while controlling for confounding factors. Two professors and a total of 97 students in four different classes participated in the study. Students in the…

In this article, the focus is on task construction and the importance of this process to develop and promote classroom communication in mathematics. The students' tests, examination of students' mathematical work, the teachers' lesson plans, and reports of the lessons' instructions are the basic data for this article. The…

FOIL is a well-known mnemonic that is used to find the product of two binomials. We conduct a large sample (n = 252) observational study of first-year college students and show that while the FOIL procedure leads to the accurate expansion of the product of two binomials for most students who apply it, only half of these students exhibit conceptual…

The art of teaching freshmen students is undergoing a rapid paradigm change. Classical forms of teaching are not applicable any more and an unmanageable offer of new multimedia tools and concepts is glutting the market. Moreover, compared to previous courses, the class size triples. In view of these challenges, we implemented a new teaching…

College calculus teaches students important mathematical concepts and skills. The course also has a substantial impact on students' attitude toward mathematics, affecting their career aspirations and desires to take more mathematics. This national US study of 3103 students at 123 colleges and universities tracks changes in students'…

An experiment using a sample of 11th graders compared text editing and worked examples approaches in learning to solve dilution and molarity algebra word problems in a chemistry context. Text editing requires students to assess the structure of a word problem by specifying whether the problem text contains sufficient, missing, or irrelevant…

This qualitative study surveyed 102 differential-equations students in order to investigate how students participating in writing projects in university-level mathematics courses perceive the benefits of writing in the mathematics classroom. Based on previous literature on writing in mathematics, students were asked specifically about the benefits…

This paper provides a method for analysing undergraduate teaching of proof-based courses using Toulmin's model (1969) of argumentation. It presents a case study of one instructor's presentation of proofs. The analysis shows that the instructor presents different levels of detail in different proofs; thus, the students have an…

The study aimed to investigate students' conceptions on the notion of absolute value and their abilities in applying the specific notion in routine and non-routine situations. A questionnaire was constructed and administered to 17-year-old students. Data were analysed using the hierarchical clustering of variables and the implicative method,…

Research has shown that students have difficulties with understanding the process of determining whether an object is speeding up or slowing down, especially when it is applied to the analysis of motion in the negative direction. As inductively organized learning through its scaffolding sequencing supports the process of knowledge acquisition…

Although dynamic geometry software has been extensively used for teaching calculus concepts, few studies have documented how these dynamic tools may be used for teaching the rigorous foundations of the calculus. In this paper, we describe lesson sequences utilizing dynamic tools for teaching the epsilon-delta definition of the limit and the…

In this paper, we report a pilot study on engaging a group of undergraduate students to explore the limits of sin(x)/x and tan(x)/x as x approaches to 0, with the use of non-graphic scientific calculators. By comparing the results in the pretest and the post-test, we found that the students had improvements in the tested items, which involved the…

With the proliferation of new affordable recording technologies, many universities have begun offering students recordings of live lectures as a part of the course resources. We conducted a survey to investigate why some students choose to attend lectures in person rather than simply watching the recordings online, and how students view the two…