The African Data Initiative started as a crowd-sourced campaign to improve the teaching of statistics in African universities. The analysis of climate data provides one suitable context to illustrate ideas that lead to a radical new form of teaching. The problem within the context comes first, the technicalities are largely reduced -- mathematics…

Students with physical and health disabilities struggle with basic mathematical concepts. The purpose of this research study was to increase the students' mathematical computation skills through implementing new strategies and/or methods. The strategies implemented with the students was utilizing the ten-frame tiles and technology with the purpose…

In this case study with Devin (pseudonym), which was part of a larger, constructivist teaching experiment with students identified as having learning difficulties in mathematics, we examine how a fourth grader constructed a dual anticipation involved in monitoring when to start and when to stop the simultaneous count of composite units (numbers…

Deborah Nolan is Professor of Statistics and holds the Zaffaroni Family Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California-Berkeley, where she has also served as Associate Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. She is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. This interview…

Kayla was a 15 years old girl with Down syndrome attending a special education school in Indonesia. A modification of Wright et al.'s (2006) approach to assessment documented her number knowledge and arithmetical strategies. This paper discusses the assessment process and the results focusing on her ability to solve number problems. Results show…

This case study examined how a teacher's choice of numbers used in tasks designed to foster students' construction of a scheme for reasoning in multiplicative situations may afford or constrain their progression. This scheme, multiplicative double counting (mDC) is considered a significant conceptual leap from reasoning additively with units of…

This paper introduces a revised model for the development of basic computation skills. The model draws on four key phases, which have proven to be important for the development of calculation strategies and stresses the use of gestures and the verbalisation of concrete and mental images. This seems to be of crucial importance for children with…

This multiple-case study discusses Connecticut public preschool teacher's mathematics instruction practice and preparation across socioeconomic settings and divergent District Reference Groups. Through the use of qualitative methods of classroom observations, interviews, and document review this multiple-case study explored the mathematics…

Background: This article reports on an analysis of errors that were displayed by students who studied mathematics in Chemical Engineering in derivatives of mostly trigonometric functions. The poor performance of these students triggered this study. The researcher (lecturer) works in a mathematics support programme to enhance students'…

Background: Robot-math is a term used to describe mathematics instruction centered on engineering, particularly robotics. This type of instruction seeks first to make the mathematics skills useful for robotics-centered challenges, and then to help students extend (transfer) those skills. A robot-math intervention was designed to target the…

The study aims to identify areas of difficulty in learning about volumes of solids of revolution (VSOR) at a Further Education and Training college in South Africa. Students' competency is evaluated along five skill factors which refer to knowledge skills required to succeed in performing tasks relating to applications of the definite integral, in…

Action research (AR) is defined by Macintyre to be: "an investigation, where, as a result of rigorous self-appraisal of current practice, the researcher focuses on a problem,or a topic or an issue which needs to be explained, and on the basis of information, plans, implements, then evaluates an action then draws conclusions on the basis of…

This article describes a mathematical biology workshop given to secondary school teachers of the Danville area in Virginia, USA. The goal of the workshop was to enable teams of teachers with biology and mathematics expertise to incorporate lesson plans in mathematical modelling into the curriculum. The biological focus of the activities is the…

The "count-by" technique of multiplication was taught to a fourth grade student with learning disabilities. The student learned to count by numbers not typically taught (e.g., fours, sevens, and eights). The method resulted in substantial increases in correct multiplications performed per minute, which were maintained and generalized to…

The question addressed here is how to integrate computational tools, namely interactive general-purpose platforms, in the teaching of process units. Mathematica has been selected as a complementary tool to teach distillation processes, with the main objective of leading students to achieve a better understanding of the physical phenomena involved…