Attention to mathematical modeling has grown, but most practicing and future teachers have limited experience with mathematical modeling and how to integrate it into their practice. However, documents such as the Common Core and GAIME Report emphasize the importance of mathematical modeling in mathematics education. Engaging students in…

The International Mathematical Modeling Challenge takes place towards the end of Term 1 each year in Australia. Students use their research, mathematical and creative abilities to develop a mathematical model to address a real world problem. Ross Turner describes some aspects of the competition.

This manuscript describes a quantitative literacy course focusing on issues of economic and racial justice, developed for a summer bridge program. The curriculum for the course, described in the manuscript, consisted of open-ended assignments that dealt with real-world issues and required basic modeling skills; whereas the culminating assignment…

Integrating the disciplines of mathematics and science is one way to place the calculations of volume and surface area into a real life context. The authors present an activity for middle-school students that aims to promote their learning of these key concepts in a personally meaningful way, whilst also developing inquiry and problem solving…

Algebra is considered an important high school course because it is recognized as the gateway to higher mathematics, college opportunities, and well-paying jobs. In the United States, most secondary schools require students to be proficient in algebra to be able to graduate from high school. One major component of algebra is word problem solving,…

Nations of the world share concerns on many critical issues in such a way that communication and collaboration are important skills for the 21st century (Trilling and Fadel 2009). Hence, connecting global issues to the mathematics classroom is important. Through such learning experiences, students can appreciate that mathematics has a special…

Students tend to see mathematical functions as static, mysterious objects that must be approached according to a set of rules and procedures laid out in mathematics textbooks (Clement 2001). Because learners so rarely experience functions as a meaning-making tool that matters to their understanding of the world, they miss critical opportunities to…

More and more schools are acquiring advanced manufacturing equipment. Activities that incorporate the use of this equipment for the purpose of teaching some academic content can either be designed or redesigned for other educational purposes as well. This article describes how the authors extended an activity that was initially designed to help…

These pages aim to explain and interpret why the late Mika Seppälä, a conformal geometer, proposed to model student study behaviour using concepts from conformal geometry, such as Riemann surfaces and Strebel differentials. Over many years Mika Seppälä taught online calculus courses to students at Florida State University in the United States, as…

The standard deviation (SD) of a random sample is defined as the square-root of the sample variance, which is the "mean" squared deviation of the sample observations from the sample mean. Here, we interpret the sample SD as the square-root of twice the mean square of all pairwise half deviations between any two sample observations. This…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, laboratory research was not possible in different educational programs at Delft University of Technology and Erasmus University Medical Center due to the taken measures. Therefore, a team of faculty from both institutions developed an alternative transdisciplinary research group project that was fully performed…

Systems dynamics and automatic control is classified as one of the toughest courses in the college of engineering at Qassim University according to the statistical analysis of the final grades. This motivated us to think about a new approach to teach this course by extending the design term project to include experimental part beside the…

Mathematical modeling, a key strand in mathematics, engages students in rich, authentic, exciting, and culturally relevant problems and connects abstract mathematics to the surrounding world. In this, article, the authors describe a modeling activity that can be used when teaching linear equations. Modeling problems, in general, are typically high…

Finite Mathematics has become an enormously rich and productive area of contemporary mathematical biology. Fortunately, educators have developed educational modules based upon many of the models that have used Finite Mathematics in mathematical biology research. A sufficient variety of computer modules that employ graph theory (phylogenetic trees,…

We report our progress on the "River Memorial Museum" didactic intervention project developed with schools, in the basin of the Atoyac River in Mexico, that are significantly impacted by the pollution produced through industrialisation. The teachers of the elementary schools in these communities, environmental scientists, educators, and…