To better understand the critical early years of teaching and teacher identity development, this study explored the mathematics teacher identity of two early career middle school mathematics teachers and the influence of their working communities on its development. Emel and Berk graduated from the same reform-oriented teacher education program…

The purpose of this paper was to examine current mathematics interventions designed for students in kindergarten through eighth grade to determine how often they incorporated the five strands of mathematical proficiency identified by the National Research Council (2001). The five strands are conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge,…

One of the greatest conceptual difficulties faced by middle level mathematics students is developing a rich understanding of irrational numbers that includes recognizing that irrational numbers are truly real numbers with an exact value and an exact place on the number line. Developing a deep conceptual understanding of irrational numbers is…

Due to the learning paradox, students cannot have real difficulty in understanding a mathematical concept that they have not yet understood. There is a gap between real difficulties, directly experienced by students, and illusionary ones, only observed by researchers. This paper aims to offer a critical reflection on our understanding of the term…

Classroom group characteristics are not only related to student outcomes, but also have an impact on classroom instruction. This study investigates an integrated model that examines the direct or indirect relationships among classroom-level adversity (CLA), instructional clarity, student academic self-concept and achievement in math lessons. Using…

Students encounter difficulties in solving areas of triangles and quadrilaterals due to a lack of conceptual understanding of the topic. The researchers have developed the following activities and the hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) through the design research approach focusing on developing activities for students to learn the concepts…

Attending to students' thinking and using it to inform instruction has been shown to be an effective and equitable teaching practice. Research on teachers' noticing of thinking conceptualizes noticing as a cognitive process, while work on noticing for equity treats noticing as culturally situated but primarily focuses on participation. Drawing on…

Previous research into the teaching and learning of surface area emphasises the use of nets and formulae to calculate the total surface area of three-dimensional objects despite enduring student difficulties. This study investigated an instructional intervention for Year 8 mathematics students (n = 47; 13-14 years old) designed to elicit multiple…

Our aim is to contribute to the body of research on learning trajectories (LTs) in mathematics by making visible a process for articulating a hypothetical learning trajectory implicit in a widely adopted, reform-based, middle-grades mathematics curriculum. In doing so, we highlight considerations, decisions, and challenges we faced as part of this…

Using question 28 from the May Problems to Ponder in volume 114, the author and her seventh- and eighth-grade students launched into a discussion of creativity, linearity, piecewise, and recursive definitions of functions. This pattern to ponder provided rich mathematical opportunities for all students in her middle school classroom.

Mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) need opportunities to learn best practices in teaching mathematics, e.g., productive struggle. Productive struggle happens when students work through challenging problems that are not straightforward. This paper describes mathematics PSTs' engagement with productive struggle in a mathematics methods course.…

Area should be experienced, not simply calculated. This task invites students to physically experience areas and the spatial relationships between them, as well as their own community.

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of collaboration between the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach and the problem-based learning (PBL) model in improving student learning outcomes at junior high school and senior high school levels. TaRL is a method that emphasizes learning tailored to students' individual ability levels, while…

South African learners' performance in mathematics, both locally and internationally, has raised significant concerns, particularly in the realm of algebra. To address this issue, a mixed-methods study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of using algebra tiles to teach algebraic expressions. The study aimed to investigate algebraic…

This study aims to reveal the mathematical reasoning process of 8th-grade students and the reasoning indicators they use in this process. The study was carried out in line with the data obtained from the Mathematical Reasoning Test (MRT) administered to 292 8th-grade students. The mathematical reasoning performances of the participants were…