First-grade children at risk for a learning disability (LD) in mathematics, reading, or both were compared to a control group on experimental tasks assessing number comprehension and production skills, counting knowledge, arithmetic skills, working memory, and ease of retrieving information from long-term memory. Found different patterns of intact…

Interviews with five Shoshoni elders during a 1-year study showed that mathematics was integral to daily life and reflective of their culture. Classroom activities are described that integrate traditional Shoshoni mathematical knowledge into mathematics instruction. This knowledge may help Shoshoni students develop a deeper understanding of…

Computational models of infant categorization often fail to elaborate the transitional mechanisms that allow infants to achieve adult performance. In this article, we apply a successful connectionist model of adult category learning to developmental data. The Supervised and Unsupervised Stratified Adaptive Incremental Network (SUSTAIN) model is…

We present the design principles for a new kind of computer system that helps students learn algebra. The fundamental idea is to have a system based on the microworld paradigm that allows students to make their own calculations, as they do with paper and pencil, without being obliged to use commands, and to verify the correctness of these…

In this paper, experiments on the automatic discrimination of basic emotions from spoken Finnish are described. For the purpose of the study, a large emotional speech corpus of Finnish was collected; 14 professional actors acted as speakers, and simulated four primary emotions when reading out a semantically neutral text. More than 40 prosodic…

Colorado's voucher law was declared unconstitutional by the Colorado Supreme Court on June 28, 2004. Voucher supporters have begun drafting revised legislation designed to address the legal problem. This article calls into question the key financial claim of revenue neutrality--a claim that was central to the promotion and passage of the departing…

This study, part of a narrative classroom inquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics in a Canadian elementary classroom, emerges from the three years I was a participant-observer in Janine O'Neil's 3rd/4th-grade classroom at Bay Street Community School. Drawing on the curriculum commonplaces of teacher, social milieu, subject matter,…

Mathematics in textbooks and indeed in conventional classrooms is often presented as exercises or worksheets in which the mathematics itself has been processed into a form that is easily digested. This McDonald's version of mathematics ensures that the mathematical skill or technique is laid bare and typically the sole focus of attention. In this…

Cognitive clusters from the Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III) Tests of Cognitive Abilities that measure select Cattell-Horn-Carroll broad and narrow cognitive abilities were shown to be significantly related to mathematics achievement in a large, nationally representative sample of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses were used to…

In this article, data from a study of the mental computation competence of students in grades 3 to 10 are presented. Students responded to mental computation items, presented orally, that included operations applied to fractions, decimals and percents. The data were analysed using Rasch modelling techniques, and a six-level hierarchy of part-whole…

This article demonstrates how a child's invented algorithm about tens and ones generated "transitional thinking" on the way to the construction of a mathematical understanding of place value. The articles also discusses how two important "best practice" classroom strategies, mathematical discourse, and the role of wait time in that discourse take…

I estimate the impact of attending a magnet school on student achievement in mathematics in a moderately large Southern district. Admission to magnet schools is through lotteries. Actual attendance by lottery winners is of course voluntary. I use lottery outcomes as instruments to control for bias due to self-selection of enrollees. Because…

Middle school students consolidate their understanding of integers and rational numbers, increasing their facility with fractions, decimals, and percents and encountering proportionality. This book shows how students can explore these important ideas in such diverse activities as exchanging currency and using area models to develop algorithms for…

Purpose: This study examined basic numerical skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and how well linguistic factors explain the variance in these children's number skills. Method: The performance of children with SLI (n = 29) was compared with that of typically developing children along a continuum ranging from preschool to 3rd…

We report on a longitudinal study designed to assess possible sex differences in math achievement, math ability, and math-related tasks during the primary school age years. Participants included over 200 children from one public school district. Annual assessments included measures of math ability, math calculation achievement scores, rapid naming…