skills are useful for different careers, and our math education should be changed to reflect this fact.” There is apparently very little to disagree with in the claim. But it completely misses the urgency in addressing the crisis facing us. The “worry” is based mostly on the poor learning and hence poor performance of our high school students who are just not ready at graduation to either succe...

Using technology tools in math instruction can help stimulate problem-solving skills and understanding of math concepts. However, teachers need to be confident in their abilities to use technology tools. This study investigated whether or not a four-week in-service professional development institute that addressed the use of technology in math education helped improved the teachers’ attitude an...

This study examined activities used during elementary school math and reading instruction. Teachers reported their use of cooperative, competitive, and individual activities in math and reading, their subjective evaluations of teaching each subject, and their level of focus on promoting students’ interests. Analyses indicated that teachers used more competitive activities in math than reading. ...

This study investigated associations among third-grade teachers' (N = 27) symptoms of depression, quality of the classroom-learning environment (CLE), and students' (N = 523, Mage  = 8.6 years) math and literacy performance. teachers' depressive symptoms in the winter negatively predicted students' spring mathematics achievement. This depended on students' fall mathematics scores; students who ...

The Effectiveness of the Enrichment Program in Sixth Grade Math and Science Classes A.Navidi, Ph.D. To improve students' learning in math and science enrichment programs have been introduced, yet their effectiveness has never been assessed. To this end, a large sample of administrators, teachers, and students were questioned and tested, while 46 class sessions were also observed. Over 400...

The authors examined predictors of teachers’ ratings of academic competence of 105 kindergarten children from low-income families. Teachers rated target children’s expected competence in literacy and math and completed questions about their perceptions of congruence!dissonance between themselves and the child’s parents regarding education-related values. Independent examiners assessed children’...

Modelling is emphasized heavily in the national math curriculum, yet the extent to which this concept is covered in the math textbooks is, while of great importance, unknown. To discover the extent to which this issue, and real problems in general, are covered in the 10th grade math textbooks, the content of the textbook for the ‘theoretical’ (“nazari”) branch was analyzed. In doing so, the vie...

The paper presents the authors’ experience in stimulating the synergy of disciplines via active learning methods; the emphasis being on project based learning. Promoting this method is demonstrated in the context of teachers’ training courses and developing a set of IT textbooks. Numerous examples are presented showing that the synergy of various disciplines is quite natural when integrating th...

We study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties addressing the non-random selection of teachers to students and of teachers to training. We address these issues by estimating models that include detailed measure...

Technology-based staff development helps teachers meet the demands of educating 21st-century students by supporting and encouraging teachers to integrate technology effectively into their curricula. The authors use online java applets as a staff development tool. The professional development model in this article provides just-in-time assistance as middle school teachers locate applets, integra...