This paper is concerned with the use of spreadsheets within mathematical investigational tasks. Considering the learning of both children and pre-service teaching students, it examines how mathematical phenomena can be seen as a function of the pedagogical media through which they are encountered. In particular, it shows how pedagogical apparatus…

Discusses three problems preschool teachers should consider when aiming to facilitate children's mathematical activity: (1) How may young children relate to the necessarily abstract basis of mathematics? (2) When is a child's activity mathematical? (3) How may "mathematical" language, concepts, and experiences be appropriately defined?…

Describes the mathematical processes that occur during problem solving, reasoning, and communication. Provides examples from mathematics education research with preschoolers. (ASK)

Presents an exploratory study with expert university students to determine how students could reseal the rupture and restore a sense of unity between the figural and conceptual components of conic sections. Suggests certain tools of semiotic mediation which could be introduced to enable students to achieve the conceptual oversight that is possibly…

This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at the University of New Brunswick in Fredricton, New Brunswick. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning.…

In this paper we report on a research aimed to identify and characterize secondary school students' reasoning and proof abilities when working with 3-dimensional geometric solids. We analyze students' answers to two problems asking them to prove certain properties of prisms. As results of this analysis, we get, on the one side, a characterization…

Informal interviews and naturalistic observations indicate that the child often invents novel ways of doing arithmetic and that some type of individualized instruction is necessary. (Author/WM)

Outlines a teaching sequence to help students move from finger counting to abstract levels of computation. (Author/SP)

The role of negative instances in conjunctive feature identification tasks was investigated. Results support the classical favoring of positive over positive/negative for equal frequency of irrelevant features (l:l) but positive/negative over a positive for unequal frequency of irrelevant features (9:1) (p<.05). (Author)

Describes a study in which 383 children in grades 1 through 5 were individually interviewed to find out at what point they construct unit iteration out of transitive reasoning. Indicates that most children construct unit iteration out of transitive reasoning by fourth grade. Suggests a better approach to the teaching of measurement that presents…

Encourages teachers to listen more carefully to what students say. Discusses two modes of reasoning in an effort to understand more deeply what students hear and the styles of reasoning that they might use in mathematics. (Contains 12 references.) (ASK)

Describes students' investigative work that resulted from playing the game Set in an attempt to show how such games can be used to develop mathematical reasoning. (ASK)

This article argues that advanced mathematical thinking, usually conceived as thinking in advanced mathematics, might profitably be viewed as advanced thinking in mathematics (advanced mathematical-thinking). Hence, advanced mathematical-thinking can properly be viewed as potentially starting in elementary school. The definition of mathematical…

Experiences in designing and teaching a reformed abstract algebra course are described. This effort was partially a result of a five year statewide National Science Foundation (NSF) grant entitled the Rocky Mountain Teacher Enhancement Collaborative. The major thrust of this grant was to implement reform in core mathematics courses that would…