Drill-and-practice mathematics software offers teachers a relatively simple way to use technology in the classroom. One of the reasons to use the software may be that it motivates children, working on the computer being more "fun" than doing regular school work. However, students' own perceptions of such software are seldom studied.…

Today's students increasingly engage in online environments, with ready access to digital resources and mobile technologies. While much of this activity is socially motivated, the internet is also a source of knowledge for students and frequently accessed for school assignments, projects and assessment purposes. As mathematics continues to be…

A challenge for primary classroom teachers is to maintain students' engagement with learning tasks while catering for their diverse needs, capabilities and interests. Multiple pedagogical approaches are employed to promote on-task behaviours in the mathematics classroom. There is a general assumption by educators that games ignite children's…

Understanding of ratio and proportion is critical to the development of higher level mathematical skills. Following Carpenter, Gomez, et al.'s (1999) proposal of a four-level trajectory in the development of proportional reasoning, a 12-week investigation was undertaken of the developmental trajectory of proportional reasoning of girls in two…

Although variability and structure are often considered as antonyms in many everyday settings, a mathematically disciplined view contradicts this opposition. To initiate fifth- (10 years old) and sixth-grade (11 years old) students in this disciplinary view, we engaged students in practices of modeling data. These practices included inventing and…

Teachers are often unaware that bilingual students often switch between their languages when doing mathematics. Little research has been undertaken into this phenomenon. Results are reported here from a study of language switching by sixteen Year 4/5 Iranian bilingual students as they solved mathematical problems in an interview situation. Reasons…

Mathematics games are widely employed in school classrooms for such reasons as a reward for early finishers or to enhance students' attitude towards mathematics. During a four week period, a total of 222 Grade 5 and 6 (9 to 12 years old) children from Melbourne, Australia, were taught multiplication and division of decimal numbers using calculator…

This study reports on the algebraic generalisation strategies used by two fifth grade students along with the factors that appeared to influence these strategies. These students were examined over 18 instructional sessions using a teaching experiment methodology. The results highlighted the complex factors that appeared to influence student…

Although sampling has been mentioned as part of the chance and data component of the mathematics curriculum since about 1990, little research attention has been aimed specifically at school students' understanding of this descriptive area. This study considers the initial understanding of bias in sampling by 639 students in grades 3, 5, 7, and 9.…

A study was undertaken to investigate the implementation of an ethnomathematical unit in a mathematics classroom in the Maldives. The research was conducted during the first four months of 2002 at two primary schools and involved teaching grade 5 students an ethnomathematical unit of work on measurement. The unit was designed in conjunction with…

Many educators and researchers are trying to define statistical literacy for the 21st century. Kimura, a Japanese science educator, has suggested that a key task of statistical literacy is the ability to extract qualitative information from quantitative information, and/or to create new information from qualitative and quantitative information.…

Coordinate graphs of time-series data have been significant in the history of statistical graphing and in recent school mathematics curricula. A survey task to construct a graph to represent data about temperature change over time was administered to 133 students in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. Four response levels described the degree to which students…