In the early 1980s there was virtually no serious communication among the various groups that contribute to mathematics education -- mathematicians, mathematics educators, classroom teachers, and cognitive scientists. Members of these groups came from different traditions, had different perspectives, and rarely gathered in the same place to discuss issues of common interest. Part of the problem was that there was no common ground for the discussions -- given the disparate traditions and perspectives.

As one way of addressing this problem, the Sloan Foundation funded two conferences in...

Why do some children seem to learn mathematics easily and others slave away at it, learning it only with great effort and apparent pain? Why are some people good at algebra but terrible at geometry? How can people who successfully run a business as adults have been failures at math in school? How come some professional mathematicians suffer terribly when trying to balance a checkbook? And why do school children in the United States perform so dismally in international comparisons? These are the kinds of real questions the editors set out to answer, or at least address, in editing this book on...

Presents the latest research on how reasoning with analogies, metaphors, metonymies, and images can facilitate mathematical understanding. For math education, educational psychology, and cognitive science scholars.

This volume assembles papers on the subject of teaching Elementary School mathematics. It includes case studies and teaching from different perpectives in order to help the teacher put the lessons and subject across well.

Lesson study is a popular professional development approach in Japan whereby teachers collaborate to study content, instruction, and how students solve problems and reach for understanding in order to improve elementary mathematics instruction and learning in the classroom.
This book is the first comprehensive look at the system and process of lesson study in Japan. It describes in detail the process of how teachers conducted lesson study--how they collaborated in order to develop a lesson, what they talked about during the process, and what they looked at in order to understand deeply...

This book illustrates the experiences of elementary school teachers across one year's time as they participated in a teacher development seminar focused on mathematics, and as a result changed their beliefs, their knowledge, and their practices. It explores these experiences as a means of understanding the learning that takes a teacher from a more traditional teaching practice to one that is focused on the ideas and understandings that students and teachers have of the subject matter. The work emerges from and reports on a unique data set from a two-year study of teacher learning that was...

This book explains and demonstrates the teaching strategy of asking learners to construct their own examples of mathematical objects. The authors show that the creation of examples can involve transforming and reorganizing knowledge and that, although this is usually done by authors and teachers, if the responsibility for making examples is transferred to learners, their knowledge structures can be developed and extended. A multitude of examples to illustrate this is provided, spanning primary, secondary, and college levels. Readers are invited to learn from their own past experience...

The research reported in this book provides reliable evidence on and knowledge about mathematics and science instruction that emphasizes student understanding--instruction consistent with the needs of students who will be citizens in an increasingly demanding technological world.
The National Center for Improving Student Learning in Mathematics and Science--established in 1996 as a research center and funded by the U.S. Department of Education--was instrumental in developing instructional practices supportive of high student achievement in and understanding of mathematics and science...

L. English, Introduction: Mathematical and Analogical Reasoning in Early Childhood. P.A. Alexander, M. Buehl, Seeing the Possibilities: Constructing and Validating Measures of Mathematical and Analogical Reasoning for Young Children. M.M. Buehl, P.A.

The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in 1989 set forth a broad vision of mathematical content and pedagogy for grades K-12 in the United States. These Standards prompted the development of Standards-based mathematics curricula. What features characterize Standards-based curricula? How well do such curricula work?
To answer these questions, the editors invited researchers who had investigated the implementation of 12 different Standards-based mathematics curricula to...