Prior work has proposed different theoretical mechanisms to explain students' course-taking patterns in schools. On the one hand, there are oversocialized accounts that claim that rules, social background factors, and supply-side factors shape observed career patterns. On the other hand, there are undersocialized accounts that claim that the…

An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate and compare the effects of two procedures designed to enhance math fact accuracy and fluency in an elementary student with low cognitive functioning. Results showed that although the cover, copy, compare (CCC) and the taped problems (TP) procedures both increased the student's math fact…

In recent years several mathematics education researchers have attempted to analyse students' arguments using a restricted form of Toulmina's ["The Uses of Argument," Cambridge University Press, UK, 1958] argumentation scheme. In this paper we report data from task-based interviews conducted with highly talented postgraduate mathematics students,…

In this article, the authors present the results of a research study in which they used two national datasets to construct and examine a model that estimates relative faculty instructional costs for specific undergraduate degree programs and also identifies differences in these costs by region and institutional type. They conducted this research…

The integration of history into educational practice can lead to the development of activities through the use of genetic "moments" in the history of mathematics. In the present paper, we utilize Oresme's genetic ideas--developed during the fourteenth century, including ideas on the velocity-time graphical representation as well as geometric…

Learning styles encapsulate the preferences of the students, regarding how they learn. By including information about the student learning style, computer-based educational systems are able to adapt a course according to the individual characteristics of the students. In accomplishing this goal, educational systems have been mostly based on the…

In tasks as diverse as stock market predictions and jury deliberations, a person's feelings of confidence in the appropriateness of different choices often impact that person's final choice. The current study examines the mathematical modeling of confidence calibration in a simple dual-choice task. Experiments are motivated by an accumulator…

The dataset presented here illustrates to students the utility of logistic regression. Its analysis results in a fit that explains much of how senators vote on a particular bill, and allows for quantification of the effects of ideology and money on the vote. A number of interesting quantitative interpretations follow from a good fit. A successful…

One of the objectives of the process technology curriculum at Wageningen University is that students learn how to design mathematical models in the context of process engineering, using a systematic problem analysis approach. Students find it difficult to learn to design a model and little material exists to meet this learning objective. For these…

This paper shows how inequalities can be utilized in reducing dimensionality of problems associated with the partition of unit fractions into the sums of two, three, and four like fractions. The need for such a reduction in this context stems from using a spreadsheet as a modelling tool. Activities described in this paper are grounded in standards…

The students of a Mathematical Modeling and Problem Solving class investigate and explore the mathematics involved in fitting a box spring mattress up a stairwell by solving various optimization problems and by using The Geometer's Sketchpad. The results show that a very small fraction of the class was actually able to solve the problem without…

The theme of the 38th meeting of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME 38) and the 36th meeting of the North American Chapter of the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA 36) was "Mathematics Education at the Edge." Academically, the theme provides opportunities to highlight and examine…

A general linear model (GLM) framework is used to suggest that structure coefficients ought to be interpreted in structural equation modeling confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) studies in which factors are correlated. The computation of structure coefficients in explanatory factor analysis and CFA is explained. Two heuristic data sets are used to…

This paper presents an alternate perspective for utilizing the action/process/object framework when discussing student conceptions of function. This perspective extends previously used frameworks by incorporating student conceptions that deal with functional properties and situational contexts, but differs in the analysis of the nature of the…

The use of a covariate for randomized response (RRT) research has been shown to reduce standard errors of sensitive trait proportion estimates. At the same time, the model has been shown to be subject to serious misspecification when the relationship between the covariate and the sensitive trait is non-monotonic. The RRT covariate model is adapted…