Thirty-seven third graders and thirty-two first graders engaged in solving a tangram puzzle in the shape of a fox. They had five minutes to solve the puzzle, and after this time, they received guidance on the particular piece they had difficulties with. Through the lenses of navigating flexible abstraction, reinterpretation, combinations, and…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai, China, all school classes were delivered through an online environment from February 24 to May 22, 2020. To support this transition, the Shanghai Education Commission led expert teachers and specialists to develop a series of online video lessons based on the Shanghai unified curriculum, and suggested…

Mathematicians frequently attend their peers' lectures to learn new mathematical content. The goal of this paper is to investigate what mathematicians learned from the lectures. Our research took place at a 2-week workshop on inner model theory, a topic of set theory, which was largely comprised of a series of lectures. We asked the six workshop…

Mathematical objects are the outcomes of human discourse and come to life through the process of objectification. Primary and concrete discursive objects (d-objects) play an important role in this process, forming different realizations through the objectification process. In the present study, we analyze the written discourses about the…

Mathematical Internet memes are examples of how the creative thrust characterising the Web 2.0 environment reaches the field of mathematics, translating mathematical statements into a new digital form endowed with an epistemic potential that is capable of initiating a process of mathematical argumentation. The research presented in this paper aims…

The many studies with coin-tossing tasks in literature show that the concept of randomness is challenging for adults as well as children. Systematic errors observed in coin-tossing tasks are often related to the representativeness heuristic, which refers to a mental shortcut that is used to judge randomness by evaluating how well a set of random…

Our study aims to determine how Habermas' construct of rationality can serve to identify and interpret the difficulties experienced by university students in the mathematical problem-solving process. To this end, a problem which required modelling and solving a differential equation was used. The problem-solving processes of university students…

This paper introduces the term "explorative mathematical argumentation" (EMA), signifying a concept for describing and analysing learners' mathematical argumentation processes. Despite multiple recent empirical evidence for argumentation promoting learning in science education, still little is known about the development of early…

Prospective teachers' mathematics efficacy beliefs affect school placement experiences and influence later teacher behaviour and subsequent student outcomes. These efficacy beliefs are open to change during initial teacher education and become more resistant to change once the teacher enters the workforce. Therefore, it is important to measure…

Action-Process-Object-Schema (APOS) theory and the triad of schema development are used as the framework in this study to investigate students' understanding of the concept of "circle." In this report, results are presented from the data analysis of responses to questions in semi-structured interviews of 15 students enrolled in a college…

Learning to calculate the area of composite shapes is an important application of area measurement but evidence suggests that many middle school students struggle to calculate the area of even simple composite shapes. In this article, I report the findings of a classroom design study conducted to investigate the collective development of…

Why do some mathematics lessons captivate high school students and others not? This study explores this question by comparing how the content unfolds in the lessons that students rated highest with respect to their aesthetic affordances (e.g., using terms like "intriguing," "surprising") with those the same students rated…

Previous studies have proposed that students' mathematical understanding develops dynamically through the process known as folding back, in which learners revisit earlier forms of understanding and use them to build even deeper levels of mathematical understanding. Digital learning environments, where students can manipulate representations, are…

We attend to the composition of even and odd functions, as featured in imagined dialogues between a teacher and students, composed by sixteen teachers in a professional development program. Data were analyzed as aimed at addressing students' intellectual needs, with particular attention to the need for causality and the need for certainty. The…

Mathematics teaching is challenging particularly for teachers who have just started their careers. Research on this sort of teacher has focused separately on their knowledge, identity, or instructional quality. Yet, teaching mathematics as a profession requires synthetic and comprehensive competency. To fill this gap, this study investigates the…