Uses a particularly contentious newspaper report that makes a cause-and-effect claim as the basis for discussing the important aspects of statistical understanding. Suggests a hierarchy to help teachers plan for and assess student learning in this area, and closes with a plea for teachers to cooperate across subjects in order to achieve results.…

Introduces a project in which students use dynamic geometry software with a TI-92 graphing calculator to study geometric constructions. Concludes that interactive technology can enhance the geometry curriculum and better meet the needs of visual and tactile learners than the traditional approach. (ASK)

There are two kinds of logical reasoning: "inductive" and "deductive". Inductive reasoning proceeds from effect back to cause, from special case to general principle. Detectives use it, examining the clues and conjecturing the actions that caused them. On the other hand, deductive reasoning proceeds from cause to effect, from principle to…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards" in 1989 was pivotal in mathematics reform. The National Science Foundation funded several curriculum projects to address the vision described in the "Standards." This study investigates students' learning in one of these "Standards"-based curricula, the…

The concept of function is central to the teaching and learning of mathematics. As a mathematical notion, the concept of function is fundamental, yet powerful, and is a unifying theme that is found running throughout most branches of mathematics. Until quite recently, when it came to the elementary transcendental functions it was commonly…

Contexts are currently enjoying much prominence in school mathematics. Generally, the contextual issues and situations learners are exposed to and deal with in Mathematical Literacy are, with good reason, determined by curriculum, learning resource and test designers. This article reports on a study that investigated contexts that learners would…

As Papua New Guinea undergoes a period of major education reform that includes the establishment of an elementary education programme, the development of an elementary teacher education curriculum is proving to be a challenging task. As a background this paper provides contextual information about the elementary education programme and highlights…

China and other East Asian countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) have consistently outperformed the United States and other Western countries in mathematics achievement. As part of a Fulbright-sponsored trip to China in the Summer of 2002, a New York City public school teacher and a trainer of school psychologists offer their impressions of some…

The Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education (ENC) houses more than 24,000 mathematics and science curriculum resources in this national repository, with new items arriving daily. Identification of effective curriculum resources, creation of high-quality professional development materials and dissemination of useful…

This study focuses on the attitudes of a sample of Grade 9 mathematics teachers to the national mathematics Common Task Assessment (CTA) 2002 and to the official mathematics curriculum policy. The notion of pedagogic identity provided the theoretical lens to frame the study. These teachers' personal pedagogic identities are compared with official…

This paper communicates the impact of prospective teachers' learning of mathematics using novel curriculum materials in an innovative classroom setting. Two sections of a mathematics content course for prospective elementary teachers used different text materials and instructional approaches. The primary mathematical authorities were the…

There is a growing interest in the mathematics education community in the notion of abstraction and its significance in the learning of mathematics. "Reducing abstraction" is a theoretical framework that examines learners' behavior in terms of coping with abstraction level. It refers to situations in which learners are unable to manipulate…

Chinese students often outperform U.S. students on international tests in mathematics. Chinese students' mathematics performances are assumed to be related directly to their teachers' deep mathematics understanding and ability to represent concepts flexibly in their classrooms, which, in turn, are thought to be influenced by Chinese mathematics…

This paper reviews the presentation of problem solving and process aspects of mathematics in curriculum documents from Australia, UK, USA and Singapore. The place of problem solving in the documents is reviewed and contrasted, and illustrative problems from teachers' support materials are used to demonstrate how problem solving is now more often…

Mathematics curriculum documents highlight the need for students to be able to choose from a repertoire of computational tools and strategies, but little direction is given as to how children choose which form of computation to use in any given situation. In this article, the author reports on the classroom implications of research designed to…