In mathematics classrooms, it is common practice to work through a series of comparable tasks provided in a textbook. A central question in mathematics education is if tasks should be accompanied with solution methods, or if students should construct the solutions themselves. To explore the impact of these two task designs on student behavior…

Learning to calculate with natural numbers by structuring seems promising but how this can be taught in a sustainable manner remains an open question. An eight-month-long intervention based on the idea of using a structural approach to addition and subtraction, and particularly bridging through ten, was implemented in four Swedish first-grade…

The hypothesis that mathematically superfluous brackets can be useful when teaching the rules for the order of operations is challenged. The idea of the hypothesis is that with brackets it is possible to emphasize the order priority of one operation over another. An experiment was conducted where expressions with mixed operations were studied,…

In the multilingual mathematics classroom, the assignment for teachers to scaffold students by means of instruction and guidance in order to facilitate language progress and learning for all is often emphasized. In Sweden, where mathematics education is characterized by a low level of teacher responsibility for students' performance, this…

The article describes mathematicians' pedagogical perspectives on proof in the teaching of first year university students at a mathematics department in Sweden. A conceptual frame that was used in the data analysis combines theories about proof from earlier mathematics education research with a social practice approach of Lave and Wenger. A…

There is an international trend in mathematics education of antiauthoritarianism, emphasising cooperative learning and students' autonomous search for knowledge. In Sweden, this is framed by "students' independent work", characterised by only limited amounts of teacher-student and student-student interaction and communication and a low…