Cross-curricula opportunities afforded by STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education), supports an environment where students can develop twenty-first century competencies. One approach to addressing cross-curricula opportunities in STEM education is the introduction of computer science (computer…

This research addressed Hungarian pre-service and in-service (both elementary and lower secondary) teachers' pedagogical content knowledge concerning the teaching of word problem solving strategies. By means of a standardized interview protocol, participants (N = 30) were asked about their judgement on the difficulty of teaching word problems, the…

Students in the elementary grades often experience difficulty setting up and solving word problems. Using an equation to represent the structure of the problem serves as an effective tool for solving word problems, but students may require specific pre-algebraic reasoning instruction about the equal sign as a relational symbol to set up and solve…

Pictorial representations are often used to help children understand the situation described in a given number-sentence scheme. These static pictorial problems essentially attempt to depict a dynamic situation (e.g., one bird flies away while there are three birds still sitting on the fence). Previous research suggested that such pictorial…

Mathematical knowledge involving whole number multiplication and division is integral to understanding multiplicative structures such as ratios, slope, rate of change, and proportions, which are important in subsequent mathematical learning. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of a research-based intervention, schema-based instruction…

This study aims to investigate a mathematical-metacognitive discourse model with IMPROVE metacognitive self-question prompts (What, How/When, and Why) in order to promote a deeper level of discourse in mathematics classes. The study involved 32 math teachers and 824 fifth-grade students (from 32 public schools) from one district in Israel.…

In this paper, we investigate the role of metacognitive postdiction skills, intrinsic motivation and prior proficiency in mathematics as Propensity factors within the opportunity-propensity (O-P) model of learning. We tested Belgian children from Grade 1 till 6 in January and June. The study revealed overlapping yet different predictors for…

Assessment data from the United States and international reports of student achievement indicate that upper elementary students are failing to meet basic levels of proficiency in fractions and writing, and that this is particularly prevalent with students with or at-risk for learning disabilities in mathematics. Proficiency with fractions has been…

Even in primary school, mathematics achievement depends upon the efficiency of cognitive, metacognitive and self-regulatory processes. Thus, for pupils to carry out a computation, such as a written calculation, metacognitive mechanisms play a crucial role, since children must employ self-regulation to assess the precision of their own thinking and…

Reasoning about graphical representations representing dynamic data (e.g., distance changing over time), including interpreting, creating, changing, combining, and comparing graphs, can be considered a domain-specific operationalization of the general twenty-first century skills of creative, critical thinking and solving problems. This paper…

The goal of this paper is to present a succinct consolidation of the why, what and how of the 'Model' method as there is a lack of such documentation for researchers, practitioners and policy makers thus far. The 'Model' method is a tool for representing and visualising relationships when solving whole number arithmetic (WNA) word problems. The…

In Canada, as in other Western countries, solving word problems has comprised an important part of mathematics curricula. Traditionally, arithmetic thinking has largely been privileged as the main strategy for solving word problems at the elementary level, thus postponing the introduction of algebraic thinking to the secondary school. Drawing on…

There is no doubt that a lesson plan is a necessary product of Lesson Study. However, the collaborative work among teachers that goes into creating that lesson plan is largely under-appreciated by non-Japanese adopters of Lesson Study, possibly because the effort involved is invisible to outsiders, with our attention going to its most visible…

To prepare students for participation in our society, where interpreting, representing, and manipulating of dynamic phenomena are becoming key activities, we believe that one should start developing a mathematical understanding of change at an early age. We therefore started a design research project to teach the concept of instantaneous speed in…

Design research studies provide significant opportunities to study new innovations and approaches and how they affect the forms of learning in complex classroom ecologies. This paper reports on a two-week long design research study with twelve 2nd through 4th graders using curricular materials and a tablet-based diagnostic assessment system, both…