Ten research reports related to mathematics education are abstracted and analyzed. Five of the reports deal with aspects of mathematics instructional practices, four with areas of learning theory, and one with student achievement. Research related to mathematics education which was reported in RIE and CIJE between July and September 1980 is…

A study involving 441 students enrolled in pre-calculus mathematics courses at Black Hawk College, Illinois, during Spring 1981 was conducted to measure the correlation between the level of students' math anxiety and four independent variables: sex, age, math background (as measured by the highest level of math course previously completed), and…

The uses of verbal rules in solving arithmetic problems are presented. Thirty-six problems were used in individual testing of five students who were enrolled in a remedial mathematics course at a community college. Two or three weeks prior to the individual exams, the students had been tested in their class on the material. The study indicated…

Freshmen placed into the second or third quarter of the first year calculus sequence at the University of Washington were studied. Two major findings were: freshmen eligible for advanced placement earned mean mathematics Grade Point Averages (GPAs) which were quite high; and advanced placement students earned mean mathematics GPAs substantially…

Several methods of teaching college-level mathematics sequences are examined for their advantages, disadvantages, and costs. Materials considered include textbooks, film sequences, videotaped lectures, and individualized teaching machines. (SD)

Argues that computer instantiations of abstract concepts could assist mathematics education by providing concrete experiences and by inducing the mental process of construction that Piaget called reflexive abstraction. College students with computer experiences scored higher than those taught with traditional methods on a test of functions and…

Described is a study that used LOGO to improve the proportional reasoning ability of students enrolled in mathematics classes for students poorly prepared for college-level mathematics. Included are the methodology, procedures for using logo, and a discussion of the results. (KR)

The world wide web is becoming wider at an increasing rate. It is virtually impossible to take any kind of accurate snapshot of the state of its development. Undergraduate mathematics courses presented on the internet are relative newcomers to the race but nevertheless seem to be increasing in numbers also at a phenomenal rate. Internet education…

Little is known about the provision of statistics teaching for PhD students in UK medical schools. A recent survey found that statistics courses were available to PhD students in 13 of 21 schools responding. The provision across these 13 schools was variable in terms of contact hours and content. At a meeting of 27 medical statistics teachers,…

To examine the effects of developmental and remedial course participation on student retention and academic performance, Sinclair Community College, in Ohio, undertook a study of outcomes after 3 years for the 1,798 first-time, degree or certificate students who enrolled in fall 1990. Students were grouped based on need for remedial coursework and…

This document describes a study of 5,000 minority undergraduate students whose SAT mathematics scores were 550 and above. Background information, high school program, college experience, and the results of two questionnaires were analyzed. Other information was drawn from a national longitudinal database, High School and Beyond (HS&B). Results…

Multidimensional item difficulty (MID) is proposed as a means of describing test items which measure more than one ability. With mathematical story problems, for instance, both mathematical and verbal skills are required to obtain a correct answer. The proposed measure of MID is based upon three general assumptions: (1) the probability of…

Repertory grid technique and extensive interviews were used to investigate the personal constructs of mathematics and mathematics teaching held by four preservice secondary mathematics teachers. Kelly's Personal Construct Theory and Perry's developmental scheme provided frameworks for analysis of the experiential, pedagogical, and mathematical…

Teacher preparation curriculum at Technion--Israel Institute of Technology (Israel) includes courses intended to bridge the gap between the pure mathematics courses and those in psychology. The focus of this paper is an experimental program for one of these courses and data collected while implementing it. This is a second report on a naturalistic…

The increasing availability of the computer in the classroom has created a need for informed and creative instructional software. Two areas of cognitive research in mathematics and science learning have implications to instruction and, consequently, to educational software design. These are research on misconceptions and on differences between…