This study describes a teaching process that offers teachers and pupils ways of constructing the division operation through illustration based on defining the reference unit (divisor), the reference whole1 and the dividend. We introduce a computerized dynamic environment, using an Excel spreadsheet, in which both teachers and pupils can…

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics highlight the importance of not only content standards for mathematics but also mathematical practices such as communication, representation, and reasoning, skills that are often difficult for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Through a single-case multiple-probe-across-participants…

A Word Problem Enrichment programme (WPE) has been found to increase student word problem solving performance when facing non-routine and application problems. However, it is unknown if the WPE has an impact on student beliefs about word problem solving and how the WPE works for students with different motivation in learning mathematics. This…

Background: Robot-math is a term used to describe mathematics instruction centered on engineering, particularly robotics. This type of instruction seeks first to make the mathematics skills useful for robotics-centered challenges, and then to help students extend (transfer) those skills. A robot-math intervention was designed to target the…

Many factors influence a student's performance in word (or textbook) problem solving in class. Among them is the comprehension process the pupils construct during their attempt to solve the problem. The comprehension process may include some less formal representations, based on pupils' real-world knowledge, which support the construction of a…

This study investigated middle school students' conceptual understanding of algebraic equations. Participants in the study--257 sixth- and seventh-grade students--were asked to solve one set of algebraic equations and to generate story problems corresponding with another set of equations. Structural aspects of the equations, including the number…