Research indicates that preschool children need to learn pre-math skills to build a foundation for primary- and secondary-level mathematics. This paper presents the results from the early stages of a pilot mathematics program implemented in Cordillera, Paraguay. In a context of significant gaps in teacher preparation and pedagogy, the program uses…

This article explores the factors that may cause teachers to defer to the textbook as the ultimate authority on curriculum and pedagogy, drawing on Bakhtin's notion of authoritative and personally persuasive discourse. We found that although teachers deferred to the textbook as the "authority" of what should be taught, they did not fully implement…

In this paper we report the results from a major UK government-funded project, started in 2005, to review statistics and handling data within the school mathematics curriculum for students up to age 16. As a result of a survey of teachers we developed new teaching materials that explicitly use a problem-solving approach for the teaching and…

"Mathematics in Context" is a middle school mathematics curriculum for grades 5 through 8. It was developed to align with the 1989 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Curriculum and Evaluation Standards. It is also based on the Dutch Realistic Mathematics Education approach of engaging students in understanding real-life…

The aim of the present study was to develop an on-line assessment system with constructed response items in the context of elementary mathematics curriculum. The system recorded the problem solving process of constructed response items and transfered the process to response codes for further analyses. An inference mechanism based on artificial…

This study investigated pre-service primary teachers' knowledge and beliefs about mathematics, the curriculum in Hong Kong, and teaching practices. Pre-service teachers from all four years of the program who were majoring in mathematics teaching completed a questionnaire. A sample participated in an interview and provided lesson plans for…

There is convincing evidence that many students struggle to learn mathematics proficiently. One plausible contributor to the low math achievement is the quantity and quality of learning opportunities provided in classrooms. These opportunities may fall short of addressing the learning needs of students, especially those at risk for failure in…

Math coaches play a vital role in strengthening math instruction and learning in schools. However, without a collegial relationship with the teachers they are trying to help, it is difficult to foster productive collaborations that lead to better teaching practice and increased student achievement. This resource helps coaches confidently clarify,…

This paper discusses mathematics curriculum development throughout the past century and incorporates a discussion of appropriate leadership style needed to bring about effective change. School leaders must be cognizant of the commitment and competence of the faculty within their school for successful curriculum development to take place.…

In this paper the authors present three design principles they use to develop preservice teachers' mathematical content knowledge for teaching in their mathematics content and/or methods courses: (1) building on currently held conceptions, (2) modeling teaching for understanding, (3) focusing on connections between content knowledge and other…

Game-based classroom activity is intended to leverage students' interest and motivation to play, and to provide safe contexts for supporting students' academic learning. However, a basic criticism of many games currently used in classroom settings is that they can fail to meaningfully embody academic content. A more subtle concern is that…

This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation's (GEF) "Developing Futures"™ in Education program in Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS). As described in the CPRE proposal and research design, the purpose was to closely…

Formal mathematical methods remain, for most high school students, mysterious, artificial and not a part of their regular intuitive thinking. The authors develop some themes that could lead to a radically new approach. According to this thesis, the teaching of programming languages as a regular part of academic progress can contribute effectively…

This study is a validity study of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), intended to test the adequacy of NAEP for detecting and monitoring the effects of mathematics education reform. The current study design was intended to support a comparison of the relative effectiveness of three different types of large-scale…

Parametric differentiation and integration under the integral sign constitutes a powerful technique for calculating integrals. However, this topic is generally not included in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. In this note, we give a comprehensive review of this approach, and show how it can be systematically used to evaluate most of the…