This paper explores the development of students' knowledge of mathematical procedures. Students' tendency to develop rote knowledge of procedures has been widely commented on. I postulate an alternative, more "intelligent" endpoint for the development of procedural knowledge, where students choose to deviate from solving patterns on…

In this paper, we describe instruction designed to teach students about exponents and logarithms and report a pilot study to test the effectiveness of this instruction. Based on the theoretical work of Dubinsky and Sfard, we postulate a set of mental constructions that a student could make to understand the concepts of exponents and logarithms. We…

We describe highly generative and affectively powerful classroom activity structures that are made possible by applying new levels of connectivity across diverse hardware platforms. Based on teaching experiments involving core topics in basic algebra (slope-as-rate, linear functions, simultaneous conditions), we examine 3 kinds of activity…

There is a significant gap between theories of general psychological functions on one hand (e.g., memory) and theories of mathematical content knowledge on the other (e.g., content of algebra). To better guide the design of ground breaking and demonstrably better mathematics instruction, we need instructional principles and associated design…

Few historic episodes in American history have imparted a more potent plea for social justice and inclusion than the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In the past two decades, legendary activist Bob Moses has channeled the best of the civil rights tradition into a campaign of school reform and curriculum development with the nationally…