This article focuses on how two mathematics teachers (Amy and Beth -- pseudonyms) cope with the changes of meanings in multiplication due to the changes of contexts. It highlights the qualitative similarities and differences between these two teachers in the sense-making process of multiplication. A potentially useful framework of supportive and…

What could two people stand to gain from sharing a taxi ride? We aimed to explore the extent to which this challenging yet accessible financial context might stimulate students' mathematical exploration of multiplicative thinking and proportional reasoning. Through teaching experiment methodology, data were collected from 37 Year 5 and 6 students…

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…

Multiplicative reasoning as articulated through scheme theory suggests that students improve the sophistication of their reasoning as they are able to coordinate additional levels of units, often described through students' use of schemes and operation at particular multiplicative concepts. Theoretical descriptions of the second and third…

The aim of this study was to determine learning difficulties and misunderstanding in multipliers and factors of middle school students in Kayseri, Turkey. One hundred and seven students from 6th grade and 48 students from 8th grade were selected randomly from three middle schools for the study. A questionnaire, which was developed by the first…

The student's criterion for being diagnosed with MLD (Mathematics Learning Disabilities) can be classified as low arithmetic skills and poor working memory. The goal of this research is to understand students' process of thinking through the Polya stages when tackling arithmetic problems, as it has been expounded by Dr. Polya For students who have…

This qualitative descriptive study was designed to address the deficiency in early math literacy skills, specifically those related to multiplication fact fluency, in early elementary students. More specifically, this study was designed to gather research and data to provide understanding of the mathematical curriculum instruction used in…

Children learn to find answers when multiplying two whole numbers (e.g., 3 × 7 = 21). To this end, they may repeatedly add one number (e.g., 7 + 7 + 7 = 21). But what meanings do they have for multiplication? The authors address this issue while sharing an innovative, playful task called Please Go and Bring for Me (PGBM). Drawing on the…

Elementary standards include multiplication of single-digit numbers and students advance to solve complex problems and demonstrate procedural fluency in algorithms. The ability to illustrate procedural fluency in algorithms is dependent on the development of understanding and reasoning in multiplication. Development of multiplicative reasoning…

After being introduced to the distributive law in meaningful contexts, students need to extend its scope of application to unfamiliar expressions. In this article, a process model for the development of structure sense is developed. Building on this model, this article reports on a design research project in which exercise tasks support students…

This study investigated preservice middle school mathematics teachers' (PSTs) understanding of proportional and nonproportional relationships and their abilities to differentiate these relationships from each other. The PSTs' abilities to interpret and represent proportional and nonproportional situations and solution strategies were also…

The reduced interest of students in learning mathematics and consider mathematics to be a difficult subject to become a serious problem in Indonesia, especially in one of the provinces in Indonesia, namely in Lampung. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the demonstration method assisted by Multiplication Board props to…

The number sequences describe a hierarchy of students' concepts of number. This research uses two defining cognitive structures of the number sequences--units coordination and the splitting operation--to model middle-grades students' abilities to write linear equations representing the multiplicative relationship between two unknowns. Results…

The low performance of Grade 4 learners in the mathematical concept of word problems involving multiplication remains a concern for many researchers in mathematics education. Several studies conducted have largely focused on improving learners' performance on bare problems involving multiplication, with little focus on contextual problems. The…

This article is concerned with cognitive aspects of students' struggles in situations in which familiar concepts are reconsidered in a new mathematical domain. Examples of such cross-curricular concepts are divisibility in the domain of integers and in the domain of polynomials, multiplication in the domain of numbers and in the domain of vectors,…