Struggling with mathematics is important for several reasons. According to learning theorists and empirical studies, the act of struggling can help students learn mathematics. Also, several important mathematics education documents advocate that students should engage in struggle as part of the problem-solving process. In addition, being able to…

A project is a finite activity aimed at producing a tangible product or service. Designing and developing instruction is a type of "project." Instructional design projects ("design projects") require instructional designers (IDs) to manage multiple and often overlapping work tasks, balance the "triple constraint"…

Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task…

Off-task activity is ubiquitous in classrooms, yet little understood. Building on recent work that illustrates the utility of off-task activity to disrupt relations of power among students, this article explores the potential functions of off-task participation during collaborative mathematics problem-solving. We examined 56 instances of off-task…

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how exponential functions and patterns can be taught by well-structured lessons composed of classroom activities, mathematical questions, discussions, and solving problems. Sawyer (1943) used a rope-and-post system to introduce the concept of logarithms and to calculate a product by adding the…

This article discusses how technology, in conjunction with carefully designed tasks and orchestrated discussions, has the potential to both reveal students' mathematical practices and to provide opportunities to shape those practices. Four specific mathematical practices that tend to be associated with problem-solving situations are examined: (1)…

Background: Engineers must acquire increasing technical and professional skills to meet pressing global challenges, but fitting training for these skills into already crowded curricula is difficult. Engineering service may provide opportunities to gain such skills; however, prior research about learning outcomes from such activities has been…

Parents of children with Autism spectrum disorders often report elevated levels of stress, depression and anxiety compared to parents of children with other developmental disorders. The present study investigated experiences of mothers of children with autistic disorder, both boys and girls. The results show that mothers report problems related to…

The editors of Mathematics Teacher appreciate the interest of readers and value the views of those who write in with comments. The editors ask that name and affiliation including email address be provided at the end of their letters. This September 2016 Reader Reflections, provides reader comments on the following articles: (1) "Innocent…

Problem-posing is well known as an effective activity to learn problem-solving methods. Although the activity is considered in contributing to the understanding of the problem's structure, it is not clear how learners could understand it through the activity. This study proposes a method to offer a visual representation for analyzing the…

The current study examines the effects of schema instruction on the problem-solving performance of four second-grade students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The existence of a functional relationship between the schema instruction intervention and problem-solving accuracy in mathematics is examined through a single case experiment using…

Among individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have a history of parent-reported developmental regression, or early skill loss, little is known about core-ASD symptoms (i.e., social communication, restricted/repetitive behaviors) and emotional/behavioral (E/B) symptoms during the school-age years. Study aims were to investigate whether…

Mathematical modeling has taken on increasing curricular importance in the past decade due in no small measure to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM) identifying modeling as one of the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP 4, CCSSI 2010, p. 7). Although researchers have worked on mathematical modeling (Lesh and Doerr 2003;…

Research on non-cognitive factors has shown that persistence in the face of challenges plays an important role in learning. However, recent work on wheel-spinning, a type of unproductive persistence where students spend too much time struggling without achieving mastery of skills, show that not all persistence is uniformly beneficial for learning.…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the internal consistency reliability, validity, and diagnostic accuracy of Social, Academic, and "Emotional Behavior Risk Screener--Teacher Rating Scale" (SAEBRS) scores. Teachers (n = 68) universally screened 1,242 elementary students using two measures: the SAEBRS and the "Behavioral and…