Functions and graphs are fundamental mathematical concepts in mathematics and are vital to helping students comprehend the relationship between variables and other advanced topics in higher-level mathematics. Research has shown that students continually possess misconceptions and inaccurate thinking about functions and function representations.…

This study investigates prospective elementary and secondary school mathematics teachers' ways of reasoning about differentiability at a point and corner points while working on a mathematical modelling activity. Adopting a multiple-case study design, the participants of the study were 68 prospective elementary school mathematics teachers enrolled…

Although numerous studies have investigated how technology affects academic achievement, very few have focused on the purpose of the use of technology in mathematics education. This current study examines how student teachers (STs) benefit from GeoGebra as one of the Dynamic Geometry Software (DGS) while solving continuity problems. In order to…

Refutational text is one of the many instructional techniques that have been proposed to be used in education as a way to achieve effective learning. The aim of refutational text is to transform misconceptions into conceptions that are in line with current scientific concepts. This is done by explicitly stating a misconception, refuting it, and…

This study aims to explore how undergraduate students in mathematics and engineering professions make sense out of graphs representing periodic and repeated but non-periodic motions. In this study, making sense out of graphs means interpreting graphical features and describing a situation that could be represented by them. The data was collected…

This study explored how the challenges encountered during integral sign determination process change after various learning processes. In this comparative investigation which is based on qualitative data, the students in the CAS group were subjected to technology enhanced teaching whereas the students in the traditional group were subjected to the…

Recognizing and interpreting variability in data lies at the heart of statistical reasoning. Since graphical displays should facilitate communication about data, statistical literacy should include an understanding of how variability in data can be gleaned from a graph. This paper identifies several types of graphs that students typically…

This study investigates cognitive difficulties and mathematical ideas that are related to making connections among representations. A three-week intervention was designed and implemented to help prospective secondary mathematics teachers develop understanding of big ideas that are critical to connection of representations in algebra. This study…

Pre-existing misconceptions are serious impediments to learning in mathematics. Means for detecting and correcting them have received much attention in the literature of educational research. Dynamic geometry software has been tried at different grade levels. This quasi-experimental study investigates the effect of Cabri-assisted instruction on…

Inequalities are considered among the most useful tools of investigation in pure and applied mathematics; yet their didactical aspects have not received much attention in mathematics education research until recently. An important aspect of teaching problem solving at the secondary level deals with the notion of equivalence of algebraic…

This article reports on results of an exploratory study on undergraduate pre-service teachers' understanding of graphical representations of motion functions. The study described pre-service teachers' explorations using a CBR device. Pre-service teachers' growth was studied in two dimensions: (a) in their learning of the mathematics involved and…

A sample of 134 sixth-grade students who were using the Connected Mathematics curriculum were administered an open-ended item entitled, Vet Club (Balanced Assessment, 2000). This paper explores the role of misconceptions and naive conceptions in the acquisition of statistical thinking for middle grades students. Students exhibited misconceptions…

Several studies have shown the difficulties students encounter in making sense of situations involving rate of change. This study concerns how students discover errors and refine their knowledge when working with rate of change. The part of the study reported here concerns the responses of four precalculus students to a task which asked them to…

Durer's method for drawing an ellipse is used to explain why some people think an ellipse is egg shaped and to show how this method can be used to derive the Cartesian form of the ellipse. Historical background and suggestions for further reading are included. (KR)

This study examines the relationship between children's procedural and conceptual understanding of mathematics and their accuracy in reporting and interpreting geography text material containing mathematical information. It was hypothesized that (1) children's misconceptions or lack of experience with particular mathematical content areas would be…