Inquiry instruction often neglects graphing. It gives students few opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of graphs, and which are called for by current science education standards. Yet, it is not well known how to support graphing skills, particularly within middle school science inquiry contexts. Using…

Despite holding wide-ranging experiences with constant velocity and non-zero acceleration, students wrestling with physical science concepts struggle to demarcate the two distinct characteristics of motion. In fact, this prior experience and loose familiarity with associated terminology often act as an obstacle toward a deep and robust…

The volume of data that can be captured and stored from students' everyday interactions with digital environments allows for the creation of models of student knowledge, skills, and attributes unobtrusively. However, models and techniques for transforming these data into information that is useful for educators have not been established. This…

Introduction: Participants' perspectives are valuable in evaluating the effectiveness of an intervention. Methods: Interviews were conducted with teachers of students with visual impairments and students who completed an intervention designed to build graphics literacy skills. Results: Six themes were identified with corresponding subthemes. The…

There are urgent calls for more studies examining the impact of Professional Development (PD) programs on teachers' instructional practices. In this study, we analyzed how grades 5-9 mathematics teachers used graphs to teach mathematics at the start and end of a PD program. This topic is relevant because while many studies have investigated…

We analyze how three seventh grade mathematics teachers from a majority Latino/a, linguistically diverse region of Texas taught the same lesson on interpreting graphs of motion as part of the Scaling Up SimCalc study (Roschelle et al., 2010). The students of two of the teachers made strong learning gains as measured by a curriculum-aligned…

Graphs are often conjoined with text passages in history textbooks to help students comprehend complex constructs. Four linkages connect text and graphs: appropriate elements, fitting patterns, suitable labels and causal markers. Graphs in current textbooks contain few such linkages and seldom mirror the construct under study. An experiment…

This study documented efforts to facilitate ideas of beginning inference in novice grade 7 students. A design experiment allowed modified teaching opportunities in light of observation of components of a framework adapted from that developed by Pfannkuch for teaching informal inference with box plots. Box plots were replaced by hat plots, a…

Using Freudenthal's method of historical phenomenology, the history of statistics was investigated as a source of inspiration for instructional design. Based on systematically selected historical examples, hypotheses were formulated about how students could be supported in learning to reason with particular statistical concepts and graphs. Such a…

This paper reports on efforts to design a computer-based instructional unit for 7th grade students that would not only address state standards but would also provide some groundwork for the students' subsequent formal study of algebra. SimCalc Mathworlds software was used to explore the same motion from different perspectives. The overall…

This case study characterizes the inscriptional practices demonstrated by seventh graders, particularly their use of data tables and graphs, in an inquiry-based learning environment. Using a naturalistic approach, we collected multiple sources of data during an 8-month instructional unit that emphasized water quality and relevant concepts. The…

This guide is designed to help classroom teachers implement the Alabama Course of Study: Mathematics K-12. It is inclusive also of the objectives tested by the Stanford Achievement Tests and the Alabama Basic Competency Tests. One characteristic of the curriculum guide is that it clearly states what students should learn in each grade level. These…

This document presents the proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA). The theme of this conference is "Navigating Currents and Charting Directions." The theme reminds us that, although we are constantly pushed to account for the quality and impact of our research, we…