In the present study, we illuminate students' multiplicative reasoning in the context of their units-coordinating activity. Of particular interest is to investigate students' use of three levels of units as given material for problem-solving activity, which we regard as supporting a more advanced level of multiplicative reasoning. Among 13 middle…

Mathematical coherence is a goal within the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. One aspect of this coherence is how student mathematical thinking is developed across concepts. Unfortunately, mathematics is often taught as isolated ideas across grades. The multiplicative field is an area of study that needs to be examined as a space to…

This qualitative document analysis study reports on opportunities to learn provided by textbooks for mathematics content courses for pre-service elementary teachers. Specifically, the study examined opportunities to engage in problem posing and quantitative reasoning, in the context of fractions, provided by six textbooks commonly used in the…

This study used units coordination as a theoretical lens to investigate how whole number and fraction reasoning may be related for preservice teachers at the conclusion of a math methods class. The study contributes quantitative evidence that units coordination provides a common foundation for both mathematical knowledge for teaching whole number…

One challenge facing the fields of mathematics education and special education is how to design instruction on fraction concepts that can meet the needs of diverse learners. An innovation that shows promise is to base instructional design upon well-established trajectories of students' fraction learning. However, little research has been done to…

This paper shares how fourth grade students solved a unique type of number line task. Instead of giving students the unit and asking them to locate a fraction on the number line, students were given two points on the number line and asked to either find 1, or another number on the number line. This type of task is called "reconstructing the…