The study of secondary mathematics involves many ideas, but too often high school mathematics curriculum materials and instruction begin by giving students the vocabulary first, along with definitions, before students have been able to explore the ideas. Particularly for students bureaucratically designated as English Learners, preteaching…

The teachers of mathematics education in China have gradually demonstrated the need for the systematic theory about mathematics education. However, the philosophy of mathematics education is biased towards the academic level, and there are few "readable materials" for direct application in practice. This paper prepares a curriculum…

Many universities throughout the world apply student-centered approaches. Common to these is that projects, problems, challenges etc. stem from "real life". Mathematics is an effective tool to solve problems, but in this paper, we discuss how we reconcile the fact that mathematics is both a pure and an applied discipline with…

Descriptions of mathematical thinking have an extended lineage. Sometimes accurate and sometimes not, sometimes misinterpreted and sometimes not, characterizations of mathematical thought processes have inspired and at times misled people interested in designing or framing mathematics instruction. Challenges the field faces in conceptualizing…

In this paper, we discuss the Experimental Mathematics course taught at Valparaiso University since 2009. We focus on aspects of the course that facilitate students' abilities to ask and explore their own research questions.

Very recently, in the "Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT)/Australian Industry Group quantitative report" (2014), concerns were raised that school mathematics is lacking real world application. This report highlighted the gaps between school mathematics and the requirements of the workplace. After interviewing industry…

The opinion of the mathematician Christian Goldbach, stated in correspondence with Euler in 1742, that every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes, seems to be true in the sense that no one has ever found a counterexample. Yet, it has resisted all attempts to establish it as a theorem. The discussion in this article…

Dr RL Moore was undoubtedly one of the finest mathematics teachers ever. He developed a unique teaching method designed to teach his students to think like mathematicians. His method was not designed to convey any particular mathematical knowledge. Instead, it was designed to teach his students to think. Today, his method has been modified to…

This special issue comprises five studies which vary in their focus and mathematical content, yet they all share an underlying communicational theoretical framework--commognition. Within this framework, learning mathematics is defined as a change in one's mathematical discourse, that is, in the form of communication known as mathematical. Teaching…

This article describes various courses designed to incorporate mathematical proofs into courses for non-math and non-science majors. These courses, nicknamed "math beauty" courses, are designed to discuss one topic in-depth rather than to introduce many topics at a superficial level. A variety of courses, each requiring students to…

Mathematical modeling is an open-ended research subject where no definite answers exist for any problem. Math modeling enables thinking outside the box to connect different fields of studies together including statistics, algebra, calculus, matrices, programming and scientific writing. As an integral part of society, it is the foundation for many…

Usually a student learns to solve a system of linear equations in two ways: "substitution" and "elimination." While the two methods will of course lead to the same answer they are considered different because the thinking process is different. In this paper the author solves a system in these two ways to demonstrate the…

Many fraction activities rely on the use of area models for developing partitioning skills. These models, however, are limited in their ability to assist students to visualise a fraction of an object when the whole changes. This article describes a fraction modelling activity that requires the transfer of water from one container to another. The…

When it comes to improving student achievement in mathematics, a core belief is that curriculum materials are of the utmost importance. However, the link between a curriculum program and student learning is affected by the ways in which teachers use resources to design learning experiences. In the first half of this commentary, I raise questions…

As with much in life the term "investigative", when used to describe an approach to teaching and learning, can have many interpretations. Some might consider that the term "investigations" is somehow "mired in the past", others might consider "investigations" to be a "credo" that sustains their own mathematics teaching and learning. With…