Mathematics is fundamental to national prosperity in providing tools for understanding science, technology, engineering and economics. It is essential in public decision-making and for participation in the knowledge economy. Mathematics equips pupils with uniquely powerful ways to describe, analyse and change the world. It can stimulate moments of…

The literature on science education reveals a worldwide decline in young people's interest in the study of sciences. This lack of interest has resulted in low enrolment rates in science-related courses at tertiary level. Researchers have suggested, among other innovations, the use of context-based teaching approaches as a way of motivating…

The changing societal context in South Africa (SA) has necessitated curriculum reform to deal with the challenges of education, from apartheid to democracy, with the aim of promoting active citizenship education. The aim of the paper is thus to illuminate to what extent the Grade 11 Life Orientation (LO) curriculum prepares learners for active…

This study explored the relationship between teachers' content knowledge and their pedagogical skills, and reports on that relationship in the teaching of Assembly Drawing (AD) in a South African context. Given that Engineering Graphics Design (EGD) learners perform poorly in the AD section of the matriculation examination, we need to understand…

This qualitative case study in a rural school in Umgungundlovu District in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, explored Grade 12 learners' mental constructions of mathematical knowledge during engagement with optimisation problems. Ten Grade 12 learners who do pure Mathemat-ics participated, and data were collected through structured activity sheets and…

Electronic tutors able to respond appropriately to a user's input have been shown to be effective in improving learning in a number of contexts. This study extends this research into the context of conceptual change during in-service science teacher workshops. Quantitative data were collected from 1,049 South African grade 12 physical sciences…

This article reports on a qualitative, interpretivist study that focused on the use of visualisation and analytic strategies by Grade 12 learners when working with problems based on transformation geometry. The research was conducted with 40 learners from a Grade 12 class at one high school in the north Durban area of Kwazulu-Natal. Participants…

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child includes children's right to participation in processes that affect them. In this article we caution that in order to give real content to participation, it is necessary to understand what participation is and to acknowledge the problematic nature of the concept. We then demonstrate, by…

There are still many South African teachers who are challenged by the implementation of the relatively new system of education. They have to explore a variety of strategies as they try to transform their pedagogy to enhance learning in their classrooms. This post-apartheid system also challenges educators to be transformative individuals who…

The paper focuses on analysing grade 12 learner errors and the misconceptions in calculus at a secondary school in Limpopo Province, South Africa. As part of the analysis the paper outlines the nature of mathematics errors and misconceptions. Coding of learners' errors was done through the lens of a typological framework. The analysis showed that…

The state of mathematics and science education in South Africa is a cause for concern. This situation can be attributed, in part, to many mathematics and science teachers' limited content knowledge, ineffective teaching approaches, and unprofessional attitudes. To address these three problem areas simultaneously, a holistic model for the…

This volume of the 27th International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education Conference includes the following research reports: (1) Improving Decimal Number Conception by Transfer from Fractions to Decimals (Irita Peled and Juhaina Awawdy Shahbari); (2) The Development of Student Teachers' Efficacy Beliefs in Mathematics during…