Multiplicative thinking is accepted as a "big idea" of mathematics that underpins important mathematical concepts such as fraction understanding, proportional reasoning, and algebraic thinking. It is characterised by understandings such as the multiplicative relationship between places in the number system, basic and extended number…

Lorraine Day and Derek Hurrell provide a convincing argument for using arrays to promote students' understandings of mental computation strategies for multiplication. They also provide a range of different examples that illustrate the benefits of arrays in the primary classroom.

In providing a continued focus on tasks and activities that help to illustrate key ideas embedded in the "Australian Curriculum," this issue focuses on the Statistics and probability strand and the sub-strand of Chance. In the Australian Curriculum (ACARA, 2015), students are not asked to list outcomes of chance experiments and represent…

As part of one of the undergraduate Bachelor of Education units offered as a specialisation unit in primary mathematics education at The University of Notre Dame Australia, the pre-service teachers were asked to complete an assignment. In this assignment they were given 12 typical algebra text book problems which they were asked to solve and then…

Equivalence is mostly associated with the strand of Number and Algebra and is fundamental in both of the substrands. Equivalence is considered a key and foundational concept of algebra, and whereas an assumption might be made that equivalence is a relatively "easy" concept; studies have shown that when asked to balance an equation such…