This study outlines the assessment culture of mathematics in Finnish basic education (grades 6 and 9) based on a nationally-sampled dataset (N = 673). The study draws on the theoretical framework of assessment cultures as defined through cultures of learning, compliance and fear. We approach the assessment culture of mathematics through the…

In this study, we investigated teachers' abilities correctly to identify situations that are appropriate for proportional reasoning and factors that might influence their ability using data on 148 teachers from the U.S. Learning Mathematics for Teaching assessment and other, similar items (with a smaller sample). Through a quantitative exploratory…

Creativity is often characterised by three components: fluency, flexibility, and originality. Specifically, in the mathematics classroom, in order to promote these aspects of creativity, educators recommend engaging students with multiple-solution tasks and open-ended tasks. In the past, various methods were used to measure fluency, flexibility…

Practicing teachers as well as researchers, mathematicians, and teacher educators have offered opinions and theoretical critiques of the multiple models used to teach integer arithmetic. Few studies, however, have investigated what students learn with models or empirically compared affordances and constraints of integer models. This led me to…

Developing fluency in arithmetic facts is instrumental to mathematics learning. This study compares the effects of two practice conditions on children's fluency in simple multiplication facts. Third and fourth graders in the Netherlands (N = 282) practised in either a conventional "recall" condition where they produced answers to…

In this article we present an exploratory case study of six Polish teachers' perspectives on the teaching of linear equations to grade six students. Data, which derived from semi-structured interviews, were analysed against an extant framework and yielded a number of commonly held beliefs about what teachers aimed to achieve and how they would…

This study analysed children's use of mental computation strategies and standard written algorithms in the domain of multi-digit addition and subtraction, using the choice/no-choice method. Twenty-one Flemish fourth-graders (M[subscript Age] =9y10m) solved problem-items that either stimulated the use of mental computation strategies or a standard…

This paper outlines some preliminary findings from a one-year problem-based learning (PBL) intervention in a Taiwanese elementary mathematics classroom. PBL stands within the philosophy of social constructivism, which emphasises that learning is a social process, not a product. In general, it involves three main characteristics. The first is that…