Mathematics education in Turkey: at the crossroads of cultural, political and economic currents

In this opening introductory article to the issue of ZDM focused on mathematics education in Turkey, a short survey of the deep historical and cultural foundations of modern day Turkey is offered. This is followed by an outline of the development of researchers, as well as doctoral programs in mathematics education at universities in Turkey. The article also summarizes recently completed influential dissertations in Turkey and explains the aims and scope of this particular issue in relation to its conception and development.     

The concept of proof in the light of mathematical work

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Our article aims to show how illuminating mathematical work as a concept from didactics of mathematics is useful in understanding issues relating to proving and...     

Addressing the role of working memory in mathematical word-problem solving when designing intervention for struggling learners

ZDM – Mathematics Education - The focus of this article is the well documented association between low working memory capacity and difficulty with mathematical word-problem solving. We begin...     

What makes mathematical word problem solving challenging? Exploring the roles of word problem characteristics,text comprehension,and arithmetic skills

ZDM – Mathematics Education - In this study we investigated word-problem (WP) item characteristics, individual differences in text comprehension and arithmetic skills, and their relations to...     

Mathematical working spaces through networking lens

ZDM – Mathematics Education - This issue of ZDM collects research works sharing a common reference to the theoretical framework of Mathematical Working Spaces (MWS), a construction which...     

Students’ mathematical work on absolute value: focusing on conceptions,errors and obstacles

ZDM – Mathematics Education - This study investigates students’ conceptions of absolute value (AV), their performance in various items on AV, their errors in these items and the...     

On the instructional model of a blended learning program for developing mathematical knowledge for teaching

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Blended learning, which combines face-to-face workshops with self-directed online learning, is becoming a good alternative in designing and deploying...     

Understanding the development of mathematical work in the context of the classroom

ZDM – Mathematics Education - According to our approach to mathematics education, the optimal aim of the teaching of mathematics is to assist students in achieving efficient mathematical...     

Problem solving and the use of digital technologies within the Mathematical Working Space framework

ZDM – Mathematics Education - The aim of this study is to analyze and document the extent to which high school teachers rely on a set of technology affordances to articulate epistemological...     

Erratum to: Mathematical working space and paradigms as an analysis tool for the teaching and learning of analysis

ZDM – Mathematics Education -     

An arithmetic-algebraic work space for the promotion of arithmetic and algebraic thinking: triangular numbers

ZDM – Mathematics Education - This paper presents an experiment that attempts to mobilise an arithmetic-algebraic way of thinking in order to articulate between arithmetic thinking and the...     

Teaching students with mathematics disabilities to solve multiplication and division word problems: the role of schema-based instruction

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Mathematical knowledge involving whole number multiplication and division is integral to understanding multiplicative structures such as ratios, slope, rate of...     

Mathematical help-seeking: observing how undergraduate students use the Internet to cope with a mathematical task

ZDM – Mathematics Education - We report on a study focused on identifying how undergraduate students make use of the Internet as a source of help to solve their mathematical queries. In...     

Transformation of the mathematics classroom with the internet

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Growing use of the internet in educational contexts has been prominent in recent years. In this survey paper, we describe how the internet is transforming the...     

Utilising a research-informed instructional design approach to develop an online resource to support teacher professional learning on embedding numeracy across the curriculum

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Increasingly, digital technologies are being utilised to provide opportunities for teacher professional learning (PL) in fully online, blended and face-to-face...     

Facilitating the genesis of functional working spaces in guided explorations

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Approximating given real-valued functions by affine functions is among the most basic activities with functions. In this study we examine two contexts in which...     

Leveraging the design heuristics of realistic mathematics education and culturally responsive pedagogy to create a richer flipped classroom calculus curriculum

ZDM – Mathematics Education - While the number of studies of flipped classrooms has increased, they have primarily addressed the efficacy of using such an approach on student outcomes, often...     

Mathematical working space and paradigms as an analysis tool for the teaching and learning of analysis

ZDM – Mathematics Education - Mathematical working space (MWS) is a model that is used in research in mathematics education, particularly in the field of geometry. Some MWS elements are...     

Online assessment of students’ reasoning when solving example-eliciting tasks: using conjunction and disjunction to increase the power of examples

ZDM – Mathematics Education - We argue that examples can do more than serve the purpose of illustrating the truth of an existential statement or disconfirming the truth of a universal...     

En route from patterns to algebra: comments and reflections

This article is a commentary on the papers in this issue of ZDM on Understanding Generalization in K-12 Algebra. It tries to interpret and understand at least some of the reported phenomena within a constructivist framework. The latter locates meaning not in the external representations but in the individual’s activity on and with them. This activity on the other hand is strongly regulated (but not determined) by social contracts and belief systems. From that, and considerations of the more general mathematical context, various suggestions for further and extended research can be drawn. One special aspect is that generalization processes will have to be complemented by some kind of instruction on the conventional algebraic symbolism and its usage.