A Title I elementary school in New York City faced a challenge in supporting students in Grade 3 to Grade 5 who did not meet state proficiency standards in mathematics. The student body of approximately 300 was 80% Black and Brown students, with 40% of students identified as English language learners or students with disabilities. The assistant…

There have been many attempts to reform mathematics teaching in Australia to encourage teachers to use more cognitively demanding tasks that focus on problem solving and reasoning. However, there is limited specific advice for teachers on how best to do this. This paper reports on one set of survey items that examines 52 teachers' responses to…

The aim of the study reported in this paper was to explore and enhance experienced school mathematics teachers' knowledge of students'thinking, as it is manifested in practice. Data were collected from records of classroom observations, interviews with participating teachers, and weekly teacher-researcher meetings organized in the school. In this…

The Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) was grappling with several issues including: (1) A respectable rate of growth in student achievement for both fourth- and eighth-grade math in the state of Alabama, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), but below the national average; and (2) A growing concern about…

This case study consisted of an examination of the perspectives of students, teachers, and administrators at the Shuangling Primary School, a rural Chinese school in Shaanxi Province, as they relate to themes of China's most recent curricular reform efforts. The intent was to understand these perspectives and determine how to best assist teachers…

Although professional learning communities have gained wide acceptance as a way for teachers to support one another's learning, there is less attention paid to the need for principals to meet together to enhance learning and leadership. Three years ago Sterrett (an elementary school principal) and Haas (a high school principal in the same…

Contemporary mathematics education reform has placed increased emphasis on K-12 mathematics curriculum. Reform-based curricula, often referred to as "Standards-based" due to philosophical alignment with the NCTM Process Standards, have generated controversy among families, educators, and researchers. The mathematics education research…

Using data for school improvement is a key goal of Race to the Top, and now is the time to make data-driven school improvement a priority. However, many educators are drowning in data. Boost your professional learning community's ability to translate data into action with this new book from Pam Robbins and Robert T. Hess. "The Data Toolkit"…

In this article, the author describes how middle schools can prepare young people for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Integrating 21st century skills deliberately and systematically into middle school education will empower educators to accomplish many of the elusive goals they have tried to reach for years. Twenty-first…

This study, part of a narrative classroom inquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics in a Canadian elementary classroom, emerges from the three years I was a participant-observer in Janine O'Neil's 3rd/4th-grade classroom at Bay Street Community School. Drawing on the curriculum commonplaces of teacher, social milieu, subject matter,…

The goal of the present study was twofold: first to examine teachers' and students' reactions toward a mathematics reform introduced in Cypriot primary schools, and second to investigate the factors influencing the effectiveness of the reform. Using both quantitative and qualitative data we found that students' progress was determined by a number…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…

This bulletin is for those who sincerely want to understand the nature of a modern elementary school program. It presents a point of view, offers many illustrations of what happens in a classroom in the course of a school day, and interprets what children do, say, and learn as they work together with their teacher. Education should consist of…

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, it reports on a study of the distribution of reform-oriented instructional practices among Black, White and Hispanic students, and the relationship between those practices and student achievement. The study identified many similarities in instruction across student groups, but there were some…