Despite curriculum expectations, many students, including a disproportionate number of girls, do not 'just know' (retrieve) single-digit addition facts by Year 3. The current study employed structured interviews to explore which strategies Year 3/4 students (n = 166) used when solving more difficult addition combinations. Results revealed that…

This paper reports on early years teachers and how often they should devote planning time to anticipating student responses in advance of the lesson. Sixty-five Foundation to Year 2 teachers (students 5-8 years of age) completed questionnaires at the beginning and end of a year-long research-based professional development program. Participants…

Making accurate judgements and interpretations about student growth and progress in mathematics can be problematic when using open-ended assessments. This study reports on the development of a class-based assessment instrument and marking key designed to assess Year 2 students' mathematics competence to reflect their learning of mathematics…

The current study explores how teachers report using enabling and extending prompts when teaching with sequences of challenging mathematical tasks. Twenty-nine early years primary school teachers completed a questionnaire following their participation in a professional learning project. Findings suggest that teachers': view prompts as important…

We report on questionnaire data gathered from teacher participants (n = 100) following their participation in the project, Exploring Mathematical Sequences of Connected, Cumulative and Challenging Tasks. Teachers shared their views about the effectiveness of various instructional approaches to support differentiation in mathematics, including…

Professional learning for school mathematics leaders is a key aspect of the Victorian Government's strategy for improving mathematics for Victorian students. This is because middle leaders in schools play a vital role in designing and leading school improvement. As part of the Numeracy Suite, four online courses were designed in 2020 to support…

Effective middle leading of mathematics is a complex task as it requires a focus on improving learning outcomes for students. This study gathered information about the activities of middle leaders of mathematics using a survey of primary and secondary mathematics leaders. Both primary and secondary mathematics leaders more often focussed on…

Research examining teachers' decision making is abundant for pedagogical activities, yet a neglected area is the study of factors influencing teachers when selecting mathematical games. This article sheds light on the factors considered when teachers' select a specific game to use in their primary mathematics classroom. Data from 248 Australian…

All students should have access to learning experiences that help them make sense of important mathematical concepts. This study highlights teacher actions for consolidating student learning during teacher-lead discussion in the early years. We report on a case study of a Year 1 teacher involving a lesson observation. Highlights of the lesson…

This paper reports results from an investigation of the impact of an intervention program which was designed to help underperforming students reengage in mathematics learning. The paper outlines teacher and tutor perceptions of the program's impact on students who participated in the intervention which intends to "get students ready" for…

We report on 25 Year 5-6 students' written responses to two items taken from an assessment of mental computation fluency with multiplication, alongside their reasoning of the strategy they had employed, which may or may not have made use of the associative property. Coding of this interview data revealed four distinct levels of conceptual…

Building on recent research into the importance of positive teacher emotions for student learning experiences, the current study involved five upper primary teachers at a Victorian government school developing integrated mathematics units built around topic areas of personal interest or passion. Respective students (n=88) elected to participate in…

Measuring computational fluency, an aspect of procedural fluency, is complex. Many attempts to measure this construct have emphasised accuracy and efficiency at the expense of flexibility and appropriate strategy choice. Efforts to account for these latter constructs through assessing children's computational reasoning using structured interviews…

The current investigation systematically contrasted teaching with cognitively demanding (challenging) tasks using a task-first lesson structure with that of a teach-first lesson structure in a primary school setting (Year 1 and 2). The findings indicate that there is more than one way of incorporating challenge tasks into mathematics lessons to…

The current study compared the rate at which problem-based practice increased the use of retrieval-based strategies for students identified as displaying accurate min-counting with students identified as displaying almost proficient performance. The findings supported the prediction that the rate at which problem-based practice promoted retrieval…