Issues arising in the transition from secondary school to tertiary mathematics study are increasingly coming under scrutiny. In this paper, we analyse two practical aspects of the school-tertiary interface: teaching style; and assessment. We present some of the findings arising from a 2-year national project in New Zealand titled "Analysing the…

Many beginning university students struggle with the new approaches to mathematics that they find in their courses due to a shift in presentation of mathematical ideas, from a procedural approach to concept definitions and deductive derivations, and ideas building upon each other in quick succession. This paper highlights this struggle by…

Two complementary processes involved in mathematical modelling are mathematising a realistic situation and applying a mathematical technique to a given realistic situation. We present and analyse work from two undergraduate students and two secondary school teachers who engaged in both processes during a mathematical modelling task that required…

It has been recognised that many student perspectives on equations and their use of the equals sign have not mirrored those that mathematicians would like to see in tertiary students. This paper tracks transition of understanding of the equals sign by comparing secondary school students' thinking with that of first year university students. We…