Constantly on the lookout for Canadian mathematics education matters, because if Canadian mathematics education matters then Canadian mathematics education matters, three young university bookstore employees, university students, unable to make proper change when I handed them a five dollar bill for a sticker I was purchasing for my laptop,…

It is of deep interest to both linguists and psychologists alike to account for how young children acquire an understanding of number words. In their commentaries, Barner and Butterworth both point out that an important question highlighted by the work of Syrett, Musolino, and Gelman, and one that remains highly controversial, is where number…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] is a global policy organization that includes the United States and about half of the Western Europe countries. It administers international comparison tests, called Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), for 15 year-old students in Mathematics and other subjects. I…

The aim of this series of four articles is to look critically, and in some detail, at the primary strategy approach to written calculation, as set out on pages 5 to 16 of the "Guidance paper" "Calculation." The underlying principle of that approach is that children should use mental methods whenever they are appropriate, whereas for calculations…

Reacts to an article published in a previous issue of this journal on the effects of graphing calculators and computer algebra systems (CAS) on students' manual calculation and algebraic manipulation skills. Considers the contribution made by Jean-Baptiste Lagrange to thinking about the role of CAS in teaching algebra. (ASK)

Discusses the history of different methods of representing numbers and how these representations facilitated counting and computing devices such as the abacus. (MDH)

Calculators have made the arithmetic curriculum obsolete in both scope and sequence. Calculators can perform each operation as easily as any other. We should be asking if there is ever a time when we should trust paper-and-pencil computation. (MNS)

Discusses how to use calculators in the mathematics classroom. Provides some teaching examples. (YP)

Experiments in strategy instruction for mathematics have been conducted using three models (direct instruction, self-instruction, and guided learning) applied to the tasks of computation and word problem solving. Results have implications for effective strategy instruction for learning disabled students. It is recommended that strategy instruction…

Discusses a counting system and number operations. Suggests six distinct areas in a "number" subject: one-to-one correspondences; simple counting process; complicated counting process; addition and multiplication; algorithms for the operations; and the decimal system. (YP)

In presenting a rationale for allowing--even encouraging--children to count on their fingers, the author illustrates finger counting systems from African and American Indian tribes and the medieval European system cataloged by the Venerable Bede. She cites number words from many languages which derive from names for gestures. (SJL)

Suggestions are made for helping children correct and analyze their own work so they may learn from their own mistakes. (MP)

This article discusses how children learn to understand the decimal system in very concrete ways, while having fun using beads. When counting the beads, the children learn 5,491 is not simply "five thousand four hundred and ninety-one" but actually 5 thousands, 4 hundreds, 9 tens, and 1 unit. They begin to understand that as they get 10 units,…

The problem of innumeracy in general and at the primary school level in particular is attributed to a structuralist design of instruction emphasizing an algorithmic approach to arithmetic. Offered is an alternative learning approach developing arithmetic as an informal context-bound activity tied to mental arithmetic and estimation. (MDH)