This article reports on a pilot study that used concrete materials and TinkerPlots to support a Year 4 student's understanding of the big ideas of variation and expectation when investigating a random chance experiment using spinners.

Video-based classroom research is opening-up exciting new insights into how teachers generate productive opportunities for student engagement in quality learning. This research reveals the extent to which effective teachers draw on a range of multimodal representations of science phenomena and learners must use these as semiotic resources for…

The Numeracy Intervention Research Project (NIRP) aims to develop assessment and instructional tools for use with low-attaining 3rd- and 4th-graders. The NIRP approach to instruction in addition and subtraction in the range 1 to 20 is described. The approach is based on a notion of structuring numbers, which draws on the work of Freudenthal and…

Subjects forced to process redundant material or split their attention between multiple sources of information may encounter extraneous cognitive load. Results of 4 experiments involving 125 fourth graders in Sydney (Australia) provide evidence for the inadequacy of conventionally formatted instructional materials and emphasize debilitating…