In this article, fourth-grade teacher Tabetha Finchum describes how a program called Arizona Master Teacher of Mathematics (AZ-MTM), a Noyce grant funded through the National Science Foundation, helped boost her confidence and broaden her understanding of the philosophies, curricula, and instructional decisions being implemented by other teachers.…

The present research investigated whether an illustration and/or a warning could help students to (a) build a situational model of the problem situation and (b) solve problematic word problems (P-items) that require realistic thinking more realistically. In 2 similar studies conducted in Turkey and Belgium, the authors presented 10- to 11-year-old…

While collaborative Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) have been designed for older students and have been shown to support sense-making behaviors, there has not been as much work on creating systems to support collaboration between elementary school students. We have developed and tested, with 84 students, individual and collaborative versions…

This study compares Singaporean Grade 6 students' performance and strategy preference on two graphic-rich mathematics tasks, presented via pencil-and-paper and iPad modes. There were statistically significant differences between students' performances on the two tasks, one in favour of the paper mode and the other in favour of the iPad. Students…

It is well known that the regulation of processes is an important factor in problem solving from Grade 7 to university level (cf. Mevarech & Kramarski, 1997; Schoenfeld, 1985). We do not, however, know much about the problem-solving competencies of younger children (cf. Heinze, 2007, p. 15). Do the results of studies also hold true for…

After completing a science unit on transfer of energy, including how chemical energy from a battery is converted to electrical energy; electrical circuits; and transformation of energy into sound, light, or heat; the students in Mrs. Finlay's fourth-grade science class were challenged to use what they learned to solve a problem. The students…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of worked examples using virtual manipulatives on the learning performance and attitudes of fifth grade students toward mathematics. The results showed that: (1) the utilization of non-routine examples could promote learning performance of equivalent fractions. (2) Learning with virtual…

In this study, a problem-posing strategy is proposed for supporting collaborative mobile learning activities. Accordingly, a mobile learning environment has been developed, and an experiment on a local culture course has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Three classes of an elementary school in southern Taiwan…

The purpose of this study was to examine child-level pathways in development of prealgebraic knowledge versus word-problem solving, while evaluating the contribution of calculation accuracy and fluency as mediators of foundational skills/processes. Children (n = 962; mean 7.60 years) were assessed on general cognitive processes and early…

Hands-on making (e.g., "Maker") has become prevalent in current educational settings. To understand the role that students' epistemic curiosity plays in hands-on making contests, this study explored its correlation to students' positive affect and continuance intention to participate in a hands-on making contest called…

The purpose of this study was to examine child-level pathways in development of prealgebraic knowledge versus word-problem solving, while evaluating the contribution of calculation accuracy and fluency as mediators of foundational skills/processes. Children (n = 962; mean 7.60 years) were assessed on general cognitive processes and early…

The purpose of this study is to determine how Finnish pupils' problem-solving skills develop from the 3rd to 5th grade. As research data, we use one non-standard problem from pre- and post-test material from a three-year follow-up study, in the area of Helsinki, Finland. The problems in both tests consisted of four questions related to each other.…

This study investigated how interaction with peers influenced the ways students managed uncertainty during collaborative problem solving in a 5th-grade class. The analysis focused on peer responses to individuals' attempts to manage uncertainty they experienced while engaged in collaborative efforts to design, build, and program robots and…

This research study aims to examine secondary school students' mathematical problem-solving attitudes in terms of certain variables. The study was carried out to determine whether the students' mathematical problem-solving attitudes differ or not in terms of the variables of gender, grade, attending nursery school, parents' education level and…

This paper describes Singapore and Australian Grade 6 students' (n=1,187) performance on a symmetry task in a recently developed Mathematics Processing Instrument (MPI). The MPI comprised tasks sourced from Australia and Singapore's national assessments, NAPLAN and PSLE. Only half of the cohort solved the item successfully. It is possible that…