Planning mathematics learning sequences as a team is becoming increasingly common in Australian primary schools and is often referred to as "team planning" or "collaborative planning." The purpose of this article is to illustrate how a multi-age Year 5 and 6 primary school teaching team, authors Scott, Rai and Kristyn, grappled…

Enhancing the mathematical problem solving and conceptual understanding of Year 6 students was the goal for a team of primary teachers. For this purpose, they investigated a teaching approach involving Challenging Tasks as a Professional Learning Community. The process followed by the team is outlined, and the impact on teaching and learning is…

There is strong evidence from research conducted in the United States that fraction magnitude understanding supports mathematics achievement. Unfortunately, there has been little research that examines if this relation is present across educational contexts with different approaches to teaching fractions. The current study compared fourth and…

Making connections within and between different aspects of mathematics is recognised as fundamental to learning mathematics with understanding. However, exactly what these connections are and how they serve the goal of learning mathematics is rarely made explicit in curriculum documents with the result that mathematics tends to be presented as a…

At the commencement of 2022 there was an opportunity to be engaged in a curriculum development project focused on reimagining mathematics learning in primary schools. Schools were seeking new experiences to support engaging students and teachers in mathematics learning. Laburnum Primary School participated in the project with Monash University,…

The study reported here was conceptualised using a theoretical framework that included three dimensions of engagement; emotional, behavioural, and cognitive, and these were used to structure the data collection and analysis vis-à-vis learning mathematics outdoors. This comparative case study involved 34 students from two Year 6 classes at a…

The authors describe strategies a pre-service teacher used to orchestrate classroom discussions that encourage thinking. They show how small shifts in the questions posed can lead to substantial changes in student participation in classroom discourse.

This collaborative inquiry between an academic (James Russo) and two school-based practitioners (Jessie McCosh and Travis Hewish) explores student attitudes towards learning mathematics through problem solving in a medium sized primary school in regional Victoria.

Mathematics educators and researchers have advocated for the use of manipulatives to teach mathematics for decades. The purpose of this article is to provide illustrative uses of a readily available manipulative rather than a complete list. From an Australian perspective, Pop-it fidget toys can be used across the mathematics curriculum. This paper…

In this article the authors provide an overview of the Interdisciplinary Mathematics and Science project conducted in Grades 1 to 6 in four Australian schools. The project teachers implemented an enquiry-based pedagogical model through 12 interrelated topics. This paper details how a range of mathematics and science concepts can be effectively…

Australia has a National Numeracy Learning Progression (NNLP) that is strongly aligned with the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. This article examines how a sub-element within this progression could be impacting students' learning of Science. This sub-element is firmly based on Mathematics education research as to how students build their…

The purpose of this study was to explore the factorial structure of motivation and perception items from a student survey utilised as part of the Reframing Mathematical Futures II (RMFII) Project. Data was collected in 2017 from 442 students in Years 7 to 10 from various different States across Australia. An exploratory factor analysis identified…

This report is based on an activity completed by 89 Grade 6 students carrying out a statistical investigation with a focus on posing an initial question given a context and then refining it for a chosen data set. Having reached a conclusion based on evidence from their data analysis, students were given additional information on the context and…

This article explores the benefits of using digital technology to support and enhance students' understanding during mathematical inquiry. The use of digital technologies enabled students to focus on the problem-solving aspects of the task such as how to compare and represent the data effectively.

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…