"Assumptions" play a fundamental role in disciplinary mathematical practice, especially concerning the relativity of truth. However, much is still unclear about ways to help students recognize key aspects of this role. In this paper, we propose a set of principles for task design to introduce students to the role of assumptions in…

Purpose: This study aims to develop a self-reflection scale useful for teachers to improve their skills and to clarify the Japanese teachers' characteristics during mathematics lesson observation (MLO). In MLO, it is important to understand the lesson plan in advance to clarify observation points, and we aim to develop a scale including these…

To encourage students' self-regulated learning at home, developing skills for textbook use to overcome learning-related impasses is crucial. This study examined the effects of providing mathematics class sessions that combined teacher instruction on appropriate textbook use with peer instruction, aimed at promoting students' spontaneity and…

STACK is an online testing system that can automatically assess mathematical formulae. When working with STACK on a smartphone, inputting mathematical formulae is time-consuming; therefore, to solve this problem a mathematical formula input interface for smartphones has been developed based on the flick operation. However, since the time of…

International comparative studies on mathematics teaching and learning often provide unitary and harmonious images of classroom practices. This paper aims to complement those studies by describing the complex aspects of those practices. Adopting activity theory as a framework, this paper considers classroom teaching and learning of mathematics as…

A Common Core expectation of high school mathematics students is to analyze functions using different representations. One type of function to be analyzed is piecewise-defined functions. The author has found most approaches to the study of piecewise functions to be abstract, disconnected from any context, and difficult for students to understand.…

An interesting Sangaku problem was chosen and a multidirectional study was performed, which included finding the locus of a circle's center moving while being tangent to two circles. It also included finding the radius of that circle given the datum that it is also tangent to the side of an isosceles triangle. Two different proofs are presented of…

The purpose of the study was to explore how contents related to sustainable development were presented in Japanese, Korean, and Singaporean elementary mathematics textbooks. For this purpose, the contents in the textbooks were analyzed at both macro and micro levels through a mixed method research. The results showed that the…

This paper reports on a study of collaborative group work in mathematics. Although collaborative group work is known as one of the important approaches in education, it is still uncertain how group thinking can be measured in various learning contexts. We used the Group Thinking Measure (GTM) test developed by [Wegerif, R., T. Fujita, J. Doney, J.…

Problem solving has been a major theme in Japanese mathematics curricula for nearly 50 years. Numerous teacher reference books and lesson plans using problem solving have been published since the 1960s. Government-authorized mathematics textbooks for elementary grades, published by six private companies, have had more and more problem solving over…

The current study aimed to reveal the changes to the identities of two tenth graders in mathematics learning at a Japanese high school during the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of learning from home versus learning in the classroom. The following research questions are raised: How has the pandemic situation affected and changed Japanese…

This paper reports the results of an international comparative study conducted in Switzerland and Japan of an elementary school mathematics lesson. The principal aim of the study was to advance understanding of the cultural specificities of a mathematics lesson in its totality using concrete examples of lesson design and implementation and of how…

Our study is on developing mathematics items for Computer-Based Testing (CBT) using Tablet PC. These items are subject-based items using interactive dynamic objects. The purpose of this study is to obtain some suggestions for further tasks drawing on field test results for developed items. First, we clarified the role of the interactive dynamic…

This study aims to examine how cross cultural analysis can lead to deeper understanding of the cultural script of teaching, and how teachers learn to transform their teaching script through a research-based transnational learning platform. In this study, emphasis is placed on a cross cultural analysis to view in depth the cultural script of…

Structured problem-solving lessons are used to explore mathematical concepts such as pattern and relationships in early algebra, and regularly used in Japanese Lesson Study research lessons. However, enactment of structured problem-solving lessons which involves detailed planning, anticipation of student solutions and orchestration of whole-class…