The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among homework time, homework frequency, and learning achievements of Taiwanese students. Applying a 2-level hierarchical linear modeling on the TIMSS 2007 and 2011 data, our findings were as follows: (1) Within the context of TIMSS 2007 and 2011 students, the frequency of mathematics…

Mathematics anxiety is a global phenomenon that has generated research interest over the past four decades. Many researchers have suggested that girls display higher levels of mathematics anxiety than boys. This article explores that conjecture in the New Zealand context. It reports on the prevalence of mathematics anxiety in adolescents and…

In this study, we investigated students' thinking about the use of letters in algebra. Responses from over 1,400 Australian secondary school students to a set of three algebra items were analysed to determine the prevalence of the "letter as object" misconception. We estimate that 50% to 80% of Year 7 students bring this misconception to…

Mathematical problem solving typically involves manipulating visual symbols (e.g., equations), and prior research suggests that those symbols serve as diagrammatic representations (e.g., Landy & Goldstone, 2010). The present work examines the ways that instructional design of student engagement with these diagrammatic representations may…

Over a period of about 3 years, 3204 students in Grades 4 to 10 completed 9862 tests to identify and track their interpretation of decimal notation. Analysis of the longitudinal data demonstrates that different misconceptions persist among students to different degrees and in different patterns across the grades. Estimating the prevalence of…