Storytelling is a valuable form of human expression that allows audience members to connect their own experiences with the narrative. As a pedagogical tool, storytelling has been explored mainly in primary school education but rarely in higher education. However, its potential for assisting students in learning mathematics and the societal…

This paper explores use of a set of diagrammatic tools for representation and analysis of the moves a teacher makes implementing a mathematical modelling task. The focus here is on identifying what the teacher did so we can subsequently interrogate this, as to the why. Data include pre and post lesson teacher interviews and transcripts of a video…

Children's multiplicative thinking as the recognition of equal group structures and the enumeration of the composite units was the subject of this research. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Multiplication and Division Investigations project. The results were obtained from a small sample of Australian children (n = 21) in their first…

Problems presented in mathematics classrooms often focus on routine tasks with students practicing mathematical techniques demonstrated by the teacher. However, this does not reflect the problem-solving process in the real world, and students often find it difficult to connect school mathematics with authentic contexts. This paper discusses…

In sharing solutions of mathematical tasks, students may use various modes of representation such as: language (oral/written), numerical and symbolic, or drawings (pictures, diagrams or markings). In this paper we explore the potential of student drawings to provide evidence of mathematical fluency. Examples of young students' (5-8 years old)…

Technology can play a pivotal role in mathematics education. Qualitative methods were used to report on how a Year 1-2 teacher incorporated "Conveyance technology" (iPads), to support the teaching and learning of mathematics through student reasoning and problem-solving. The study was conducted in Australia. A single case was chosen,…

We report on the use of a data-gathering task requiring preservice primary teachers to 'graph' their emerging relationships with mathematics. A cultural-historical activity approach was used to analyse data from nine final year preservice primary teachers to reveal what and how key events in their lives helped shape their current mathematical…

Two case studies of Australian primary school students tracked changes in their data interpretation and representation over three years. Students were engaged in predictive reasoning tasks based on their interpretation of a data table showing temperature change over time. Students' explanations and graphical representations were collected at the…

The current study explores how teachers report using enabling and extending prompts when teaching with sequences of challenging mathematical tasks. Twenty-nine early years primary school teachers completed a questionnaire following their participation in a professional learning project. Findings suggest that teachers': view prompts as important…

Promoting reasoning is the goal of mathematics education. While reasoning behaviours can be observed, how to characterise them and nurture their growth remains ambiguous. In this article, we report our effort in drafting a learning progression and geometric thinking model and using them to investigate Australian students' geometric reasoning…

This article presents a story of practice regarding how a primary school addressed the issue of supporting English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) learners to communicate and reason in mathematics. A shared understanding across the school uncovered teachers have a critical role in supporting EAL/D learners and their acquisition and…

This article reports on a project which involved introducing challenging tasks in the early years' classrooms of twenty Victorian primary schools. The obstacles teachers encountered and how they overcame those obstacles are discussed.

There is an educational expectation that children's natural drawing will develop into proficient mathematical representations and formal diagrams, yet there is little research available to guide the assessment and development of children's mathematical drawing skills. The aim of this paper is to explore how Year 2 children (approx. 7 years) chose…

In response to increasing teacher interest in how to design and implement effective challenging tasks, James presents the Launch/Explore/Discuss model that builds on the work of leading Australian educators and researchers Peter Sullivan, Doug Clarke, and Charles Lovitt.

This paper investigates students' mathematical modeling activity in data-rich modeling tasks. It aims at gaining insight into how students develop meaning when modeling data-rich situations and the mathematical models produced. A tendency to model a particular dataset, rather than the phenomenon that the dataset is a particular instance of, has…