Much of the education research on implicit differentiation and related rates treats the topic of differentiating equations as an unproblematic application of the chain rule. This paper instead problematizes the legitimacy of this procedure. It develops a conceptual analysis aimed at exploring how a student might come to understand when and why one…

A one-semester course at the third-year level at York University is described. It tries to legitimize in students' eyes that it makes sense to talk about mathematics as well as do mathematics. Seven course themes are discussed, followed by nine problems used in the course. (MNS)

Describes an exploratory investigation of how children reacted to problems with missing, surplus or contradictory data. It was found that the majority of children gave unsatisfactory answers to such problems. (PK)

Offers examples of non-standard mathematical application problems. The applications come from a variety of areas including industry and other cultures. (PK)