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.…

This article is a report on a longitudinal case study that investigated the problem of lowered engagement with mathematics and students' perspectives of the factors that influenced their engagement during the middle years of schooling. The article provides a synthesis of the entire study and a summary of its findings. In order to address the…

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…

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…

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers the potential for changing mathematics education for both teachers and students. However, how ICT is used, and by whom, is critical to realizing this potential. This paper reports on an investigation of the use of ICT in the learning and teaching of mathematics in rural and urban primary…

Rural schools, students, teachers, administrators, families and community leaders face unique challenges from those of their urban and suburban counterparts. This paper investigates motivation in rural secondary schools, with a particular focus on mathematics, from teacher and student perspectives. It integrates recent research on math learning…

The levels of engagement in mathematics experienced by students during the middle years of schooling (Years 5 to 8 in New South Wales) has been of concern in Australia for some years. Lowered engagement in school has been attributed to factors such as inappropriate teaching strategies, curricula that is unchallenging and irrelevant, and cultural…

In Australia, concerns about the quality of mathematics education that students experience are particularly salient in rural schools. These schools typically report great difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified teachers of mathematics. Teachers in non-metropolitan locations may also experience professional isolation if they have limited…

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…

We have been investigating university student conceptions of mathematics over a number of years, with the goal of enhancing student learning and professional development. We developed an open-ended survey of three questions, on "What is mathematics" and two questions about the role of mathematics in the students' future. This questionnaire was…

This paper reports on the results of an observational parallel study conducted simultaneously at 2 universities--one each in New Zealand and Germany. It deals with university engineering students' difficulties in the formulation step of solving a typical application problem from a first-year calculus course. Two groups of students (54 in New…

This article focuses on a group of elementary students and their mathematics experiences in two classes. The two classes featured mathematics lessons that were organised in contrasting ways. The purpose of this article is to examine students' views of their experiences in these different mathematics classes. Through a focus on identity and…

This article discusses students' perceptions as a source for understanding education. It addresses what didactically experienced children, called "didactikids", taught us about the empty number line as a didactical model for teaching whole number calculations. The article mainly reports on a student consultancy study carried out in the…

Students' mathematical lives are characterized not only by a set of mathematical ideas and the engagement in mathematical thinking, but also by social relations, specifically, relations of authority. Watching student actions and speaking to students, one becomes cognizant of a "web of authority" ever present in mathematics classrooms. In past…

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…