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.…

In this paper, we discuss the process of identifying and validating students' abilities to think proportionally. More specifically, we describe the methodology we used to identify these proportional reasoning attributes, beginning with the selection and review of relevant literature on proportional reasoning. We then continue with the…

This study is focused on identifying and describing the reasoning patterns of middle grade students when examining potentially similar figures. Described here is a framework that includes 11 strategies that students used during clinical interview to differentiate similar and non-similar figures. Two factors were found to influence the strategies…

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…

Within mathematics curricula, algebra has been widely recognized as one of the most difficult topics, which leads to learning difficulties worldwide. In Indonesia, algebra performance is an important issue. In the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007, Indonesian students' achievement in the algebra domain was…

In this paper, we draw on Wenger's (1998) conception of communities of practice to observe the emergence of a community of practice among middle grades mathematics teachers who participated in a two-year blended-format (online synchronous, online asynchronous, and face to face) professional development program designed to increase middle-grades…

Learning situations that concentrate on conceptual understanding are particularly challenging for learners with limited proficiency in the language of instruction. This article presents an intervention on fractions for Grade 7 in which linguistic challenges and conceptual mathematical challenges were treated in an integrated way. The quantitative…

Proportional reasoning involves the use of ratios in the comparison of quantities. While it is a key aspect of numeracy, particularly in the middle years of schooling, students do not always develop proportional reasoning naturally. Research suggests that many students do not apply proportional methods appropriately and that they often erroneously…

This paper reports on school transition for 15 mathematically gifted Year 6 and Year 8 students. The data are extracted from a longitudinal qualitative study that examined student and parent perspectives, and programme provision for mathematically gifted and talented students before and after a change of schools. The students moved from primary…

Mathematics education research has documented several classroom practices that might influence student self-regulation. We know little, however, about the ways these classroom practices could be structured in real classroom settings. In this exploratory case study, we purposefully selected a sixth-grade mathematics teacher who had participated in…

The three middle level mathematics teachers in this set of case studies were engaged in a longitudinal professional development program that sought to impact teaching practices through increasing participants' mathematical knowledge for teaching. This study investigates how teachers use the contexts in which their teaching practices are situated.…

The structure of two-tier testing is such that the first tier consists of a multiple-choice question and the second tier requires justifications for choices of answers made in the first tier. This study aims to evaluate two-tier tasks in "proportion" in terms of students' capacity to write and select justifications and to examine the effect of…

Prospective teachers are expected to construct, emphasise, integrate, and make use of mathematical connections; in doing so, they acquire an understanding of mathematics that is fluid, supple, and interconnected ("Evitts Dissertation Abstracts International," 65(12), 4500, 2005). Given the importance of mathematical connection making, an…

The following paper describes the development of an instrument designed to assess middle school students' interest in statistical literacy. The paper commences with a review of the literature as it relates to interest in this context and then proposes a theoretical model upon which the proposed instrument is based. The Rasch Rating Scale model is…

Developed from Noddings's (2002) care theory, von Glasersfeld's (1995) constructivism, and Ryan and Frederick's (1997) notion of subjective vitality, a mathematical caring relation (MCR) is a quality of interaction between a student and a mathematics teacher that conjoins affective and cognitive realms in the process of aiming for mathematical…