A key motivational tactic in undergraduate mathematics teaching is to launch topics with fundamental questions that originate from surprising or remarkable phenomena. Nonetheless, constructing a sequence of tasks that promotes students' own routes to resolving such questions is challenging. This note aims to address this challenge in two ways.…

Many mathematics departments have instituted transition-to-proof courses for second semester sophomores to help them learn how to construct proofs and to prepare them for proof-based courses, such as abstract algebra and real analysis. We have developed a way of getting students, who often stare at a blank piece of paper not knowing what to do, to…

A problem sequence is presented developing the basic properties of the set of natural numbers (including associativity and commutativity of addition and multiplication, among others) from the Peano axioms, with the last portion using von Neumann's construction to provide a model satisfying these axioms. This sequence is appropriate for…

Twenty years ago when the author was student teaching, he quickly learned what geometry teachers and researchers (e.g., Senk 1985) have long known: High school geometry students struggle with proof. Throughout his career, he has tried to create instructional materials to make proof more accessible to his students. From field-testing materials with…

The study of functions is a critical route into teaching and learning algebra in the elementary grades, yet important questions remain regarding the nature of young children's understanding of functions. This article reports an empirically developed learning trajectory in first-grade children's (6-year-olds') thinking about generalizing functional…

The findings discussed here are a small part of a larger study entitled, "Encouraging Persistence Maintaining Challenge". The paper reports five teachers' observations of the implementation of a task which was new to them. The teachers were asked to identify aspects of the task which they perceived as challenging for the Year 6 students.…

As learning trajectories gain traction in mathematics education, we seek to understand the ways in which teachers may use them in interactions with students. This paper reports on one group of elementary teachers' use of their emerging knowledge of a learning trajectory to examine key pedagogical practices. Findings suggest that a learning…

In this article, I argue for a renewed focus in mathematics education research on procedural knowledge. I make three main points: (1) The development of students' procedural knowledge has not received a great deal of attention in recent research; (2) one possible explanation for this deficiency is that current characterizations of conceptual and…