In this note we introduce an infinite series which represents an interesting challenge for students with the relevant background.

The use of technologies in mathematics education at all levels has been discussed extensively for a number of years. It is one of the few themes that was the object of two ICMI studies, the most recent being published in 2010. Two new approaches, emerging lately in the teaching and learning of Mathematics at all levels, will be discussed:…

When students encounter challenging problems, difficulty or errors in the problem solving process, they must have the ability to adapt or change their problem solving methods; in other words, they must possess strategic flexibility. The aim of this study was to determine the strategic flexibility indicators displayed by gifted children in solving…

In this paper we explore the difficulties engineering undergraduates encounter with tertiary mathematics. Results from our survey (N = 71) show that students in our sample face issues mostly related to the challenging nature of university mathematics, the absence of worked examples during lectures and the discontinuity of school and university…

This study focuses on computer-based formative assessment for supporting problem solving and reasoning in mathematics. To be able to assist students who find themselves in difficulties, the software suggested descriptions - diagnoses - of the encountered difficulty the students could choose from. Thereafter, the software provided metacognitive and…

This study investigates middle school students' reasoning about parallelism and perpendicularity of two line segments. Data were collected from 83 middle school students through an identification task consisting of various examples and non-examples of the parallelism and perpendicularity of two line segments. One-to-one interviews were also…

This study aimed to investigate the relative effectiveness of a computer-supported teaching sequence in solving optimization problems in calculus compared to a traditional teaching approach. The participants in the study were 46 first-year prospective mathematics teachers studying in two different classes of a four-year elementary mathematics…

In this note, some variants of Cauchy's mean value theorem are proved. The main tools to prove these results are some elementary auxiliary functions.

We propose some generalizations of the classical Division Algorithm for polynomials over coefficient rings (possibly non-commutative). These results provide a generalization of the Remainder Theorem that allows calculating the remainder without using the long division method, even if the divisor has degree greater than one. As a consequence we…

Since problem solving became one of the foci of mathematics education, numerous studies have been performed to improve its teaching, develop students' higher-level skills, and evaluate its learning. While these studies usually study specific aspects of problem solving, further research is needed to understand how to address problem solving from a…

The topic of recurrence relations has recently been introduced in many discrete mathematics textbooks. Recurrence relations are efficient modelling and problem-solving techniques used in mathematics. Combinatorial problems are often used to introduce recurrence relations. However, many textbooks consider problems that can be reduced only to the…

The goal of this study is to characterize how pre-service teachers recognize students' reasoning, based in the unitizing process, when students solve ratio comparison problems and, how they consider the unitizing process as a Key Development Understanding to propose teaching decisions. Ninety-one pre-service primary teachers interpreted primary…

Despite the importance and many applications that parametric equations and curves have in mathematics and other sciences, there is a lack of research regarding this topic in mathematics education. The goal of this article is to explore university students' understanding of parametric equations and curves based on two lenses: Action, Process,…

Understanding a mathematical concept in real-world situations is of practical importance and would be helpful to learn the concept in depth. One potential way to help students learn mathematical concepts in real-world situations would be to engage them with contextual problems. Exponential and logarithmic concepts are essential topics in higher…

In this note, I present an 'easy-to-be-remembered' shortcut for promptly solving the ubiquitous integral [line integral] x[superscript n] e[superscript alpha x] dx for any integer n>0 using only the successive derivatives of x[superscript n]. Some interesting applications are indicated. The shortcut is so simple that it could well be included…