In this study students engage in learning about Big Data in a Knowledge Community and Inquiry curriculum. Using a design based approach, a three week statistics unit was developed to allow students in a 12 grade mathematics course to explore advanced concepts in Big Data, using interdisciplinary themes. Learning trajectories were guided by an Interactive Orchestrated Learning Space (IOLS), insp...

Introduction The special issue of this journal (Nov. 2000) that was devoted to “Some Great Ideas for Geoscience Courses,” included nine ideas under the heading “Earth materials.” Six of those papers involved classification (Thomas and Thomas, 2000; Dowse, 2000; Reynolds and Semken, 2000; Harper, 2000; Christman, 2000; Niemitz, 2000). Classification of rocks and minerals is obviously a necessary...

Introduction Constructivism is the most influential ‘theory’ of learning in education. In mathematics education in particular, many and if not most educators would claim to be constructivist in one form or another. The word ‘theory’, however, is inappropriate, for constructivism is not a structured framework of ideas or concepts that can determine an approach to mathematics education (a notable...

The ability to compute, problem solve, and apply concepts and skills in mathematics influences multiple decisions in our lives. The National Research Council (1989) reported that mathematics is especially evident in our technology-rich society, where number sense and problem solving skills have increased the importance and demands of advanced levels of proficiency. However, mathematics is often...

We report on a project that investigates the use of engineering as a context in which to learn mathematics through an evaluation of a LEGO-based robotics curriculum. We performed a content analysis of the curriculum in order to identify the types of mathematics topics that students would have an opportunity to learn, and investigated the extent to which those topics were aligned with national m...

What are the processes by which we construct mathematical concepts? What is the nature of the cognitive entities constructed in this process? Based on the theories of cognitive construction developed by Piaget for younger children, Dubinsky proposed APOS theory to describe how act ions become interiorized into processes and then encapsulated as mental objects, which take their place in more sop...

In June of 2010, the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM) were introduced in the U.S. Long before the advent of the CCSSM, American schools had a de facto national mathematics curriculum, namely, the curriculum dictated by school mathematics textbooks. While there are some formal differences among these books, the underlying mathematics is quite similar throughout. The resulting c...

this paper is about concept maps and how they can assist in the learning ofconcepts of mathematics. first the paper presents the theoretical backgroundand working denitions for concept maps. then this study examines the impactof using concept maps in learning of fractions. results of this study indicatedthat using this strategy was eective in learning of fractions for fourth-gradestudents. th...