This document introduces Virginia's Oyster Reef Teaching EXperience (VORTEX), which is an interdisciplinary program focusing on the importance of oyster reef communities in the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The VORTEX program uses field and laboratory experience supported by multimedia instruction. This document presents an overview on the biology of…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has produced a distance learning series of four 60-minute video programs with an accompanying Web site and companion teacher guides designed for students in grades 3-5. The story lines of each program or episode involve six inquisitive school children who meet in a treehouse. They seek the…

This study examined the initial transition to an online learning environment by college of education faculty and staff at a university in the Chicago, Illinois, area. Using a case study approach, the planning, development, and implementation of a new online course were explored, collecting data to document the process, outcomes, and reflections of…

This document contains the reports of the travel grant awardees who participated in the eighth International Congress on Mathematics Education (ICME-8) in Sevilla, Spain, July 14-21, 1996. The support of these awardees marks the importance placed on mathematics education in the United States and participation in the international congresses. This…

This paper describes how one group of students developed personally meaningful ways to reason mathematically within the context of measurement. Episodes taken from a first grade classroom in which a 4-month teaching experiment was conducted are presented. One of the goals of the teaching experiment was to develop instructional sequences designed…

This book is a guide is for school practitioners who want to know more about planning and conducting focus groups as an aid to decision-making. It emphasizes practical and cost-effective ways to ensure accurate results. After defining the focus group, chapter 1 offers ways focus groups can be used in schools and reasons for using them. Chapter 2…

As part of a cross-cultural investigation of self-regulated learning, this study investigated American and South Korean children's knowledge of appropriate self-regulation in a variety of settings. Participating in the study were 120 South Korean and 95 American children, nearly equally divided between males and females in each of 3 grades--first,…

This study sought to examine the effects of meta cognitive self-regulation on problem solving across three conditions: (1) an interactive, computer-based treatment condition; (2) a noninteractive computer-based alternative treatment condition; and (3) a control condition. Also investigated was which of five components of metacognitive…

This study was a summative evaluation of Astronomy Village[R]: Investigating the Solar System[TM]. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Astronomy Village is designed to teach students fundamental concepts in life, earth, and physical science by having them investigate cutting-edge questions related to the solar system. In Astronomy Village…

In two experiments, 216 college students learned a mathematical procedure and returned for a test either one or four weeks later. In Experiment 1, performance on the four-week test was virtually doubled when students distributed 10 practice problems across two sessions instead of massing the same 10 problems in one session. This finding suggests…

We explore how fourth grade (9 to 10 year olds) students can come to understand and use the syntactic rules of algebra on the basis of their understanding about how quantities are interrelated. Our classroom data comes from a longitudinal study with students who participated in weekly Early Algebra activities from grades 2 through 4. We describe…

During several years of experimentation, we accumulated a large collection of data on the analysis of problems generally encountered in algebra and on the reasoning developed by students at different levels when confronted with these problems. Analysis of this data led us to a new way of looking at differences among word problems, and to the…

Whereas different studies have each emphasised the importance of different variables for productive mathematics learning, this study has found the teacher to be of major importance. In the 13 third grade classrooms of five different elementary schools students' feelings about mathematics and their performance in routine and novel problems were…

Much has been said on matter of aesthetics and mathematics--perhaps most commonly articulated in relation to properties such as "beauty" and "elegance," which are used to distinguish good from not-so-good mathematical products. Despite its importance in the work of mathematicians, it has been argued that aesthetics cannot be incorporated into…

In this paper we analyze the meanings of the "equal" sign as generated by sense production of the methods of substitution and comparison for solving problems and systems of equations of two unknowns. These methods are usually introduced through an extension process of the syntax and meanings recently learned by students in order to solve…