This paper reports on empirical results about the influence of two different teaching designs on the development of tertiary students' modelling competency and attitudes towards modelling. A total of 144 first year engineering students were exposed to a diagnostic entrance test, a modelling unit consisting of five lessons with ten tasks, enframed…

Learners' difficulties with proof have been ascribed to their lack of understanding of functions that proof performs in mathematics, namely, verification, explanation, communication, discovery, and systematization. However, the extant mathematics education literature on validation of instruments designed to measure learners' beliefs about the…

In this paper, we share details of a South African early grades' number intervention informed by aspects of Davydov's writing on early number teaching and learning. A key part of Davydov's approach to early number teaching involves starting with attention to relationships between quantities rather than with counting. The Structuring Number…

This paper illuminates challenges confronting teachers and students at the literacy/numeracy interface in contexts where students have not developed sufficient English language proficiency to be learning mathematics through English but, due to socio-politically and economically driven perceptions are being taught in English. We analyse transcript…

Mathematical problems that make links to the everyday and to disciplines other than mathematics--variously referred to as practical, realistic, real-world or applied problems in the literature--feature in school and undergraduate mathematics reforms aimed at increasing mathematics participation in contexts of inequity and diversity. In this…

The reported research attempts to trace possible reasons for third grade learners' limited progress in numeracy in a low socioeconomic status (SES) South African context. This is done through two lenses, both stemming from Sfard's commognitive (The term "commognition" has been offered by Sfard (2008) as an amalgam of…

In this article, we present a coding framework based on simultaneity and connections. The coding focuses on microlevel attention to three aspects of simultaneity and connections: between representations, within examples, and between examples. Criteria for coding that we viewed as mathematically important within part-whole additive relations…

This article presents a description of a South African mathematics teacher's struggles to mediate a new national assessment tool called the Common Tasks for Assessment with her grade 9 learners, who are unprepared for the assessment. The purpose of the study is to describe and to identify the constraints on the teacher's mediation attempts. The…

The world wide web is becoming wider at an increasing rate. It is virtually impossible to take any kind of accurate snapshot of the state of its development. Undergraduate mathematics courses presented on the internet are relative newcomers to the race but nevertheless seem to be increasing in numbers also at a phenomenal rate. Internet education…

This paper is a case study of newspaper mathematics courses developed by SACHED TRUST and published as part of a broader newspaper project in South Africa between 1977 and 1980. Findings are presented, culminating in some recommendations for the future use of the newspaper for motivating adults to study mathematics. (Author/PK)

Focuses on reasons for the development of a mathematics test for admission of African students from grossly under-resourced schools as well as for placing students into a diversifying first-year curriculum. Highlights the process by which the test questions were developed and piloted. Discusses the reliability of the test and correlations with…

Two separate studies examined sex differences in high school and university students in Bophuthatswana on socio-personal variables. Study 1 (n=109) involving socioeconomic status, school alienation, sex, self-concept, mathematics attitude, and mathematics achievement indicated boys scored significantly higher on attitude and achievement. Study 2…

Draws on two research projects in South Africa to describe and discuss the language practices of teachers in primary multilingual mathematics classrooms. Contends that while at a general political and pedagogical level it makes sense for teachers to encourage and use code-switching as a learning and teaching resource, this is not a straightforward…