This study aims to investigate the obstacles in eighth-grade students' understanding of integer exponents using a mixed method research design. A total of 165 eighth-grade students were given a paper-pencil task and clinical interviews were conducted with 12 students. The findings indicated that achievement of the participants was low, especially…

This research documents the aims and the impact of a teaching experiment on how the absorption of light depends on the thickness of the absorbing medium. This teaching experiment is more specifically characterized as bringing to bear a "concept-driven interactive pathway". It is designed to make students analyse the absorption of light…

When viewed through a lens of embedded cognition, algorithms may enable aspects of the cognitive work of multi-digit multiplication to be "offloaded" to the environmental structure created by an algorithm. This study analyses four multiplication algorithms by viewing different algorithms as enabling cognitive work to be distributed…

This paper presents the results of a research, which proposes the introduction of the teaching by Research and Study Paths (RSPs) into Argentinean secondary schools within the frame of the Anthropologic Theory of Didactics (ATD). The paths begin with the study of "Q[subscript 0]: How to operate with any curves knowing only its graphic…

This study investigated children's understanding of area measurement, including the concept of area and the area formula of a rectangle, as well as their strategic knowledge for solving area measurement problems. Twenty-two fourth-graders from three classes of a public elementary school in Taipei, Taiwan, participated in a one-on-one interview.…

We present the findings of a study on prospective elementary teachers' proportional reasoning. After describing some of the teachers' performance in solving multiplicative structure problems that involve ratios and relations of direct proportionality between quantities, we were able to establish classifications of their answers according to…

Four hundred and three 3rd- and 5th-grade Chinese students took the Multiplication Estimation Test or participated in the interview on it, designed to assess their computational estimation performance on whole-number multiplication. Students perform better when tasks are presented visually than orally. Third graders tend to use rounding based…