Blog tips: "Wild about math!"

Sol Lederman has a very nice blog about mathematics, and the focus is on "making math fun and accessible". The blog itself is called "Wild About Math!", and it is definitely worth checking out!

Sol has written much about learning mathematics by doing mathematics, and he appears to have a special interest in solving mathematical problems. One of the things Sol often writes about is the so called Monday Math Madness problem from the Blinkdagger blog. Lots of people already subscribe to the blog, and you can too! It's easy!

A good idea for starters would be to read some of Sol's featured articles. The first five are:

• 10 ways to get wild about Math
• 11 tips for building a strong Math foundation for kids
• EFT clears Math phobia
• How kinesthetic folks learn Math
  
• How to get past “stupid” Math mistakes

TMME, No 1/2 2009 is here!

I gave a pre-announcement of this two days ago, but now the first number of The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast for 2009 is ready for everyone to read. The feature themes in this double-issue is statistics education, and mathematics education research in the southern hemisphere. The first section of the issue has a number on articles on this:

• TEACHER KNOWLEDGE AND STATISTICS: WHAT TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE ARE USED IN THE PRIMARY CLASSROOM? by Tim Burgess (New Zealand)
• WHAT MAKES A “GOOD” STATISTICS STUDENT AND A “GOOD” STATISTICS TEACHER IN SERVICE COURSES? by Sue Gordon, Peter Petocz and Anna Reid (Australia)
• STUDENTS’ CONCEPTIONS ABOUT PROBABILITY AND ACCURACY, by Ignacio Nemirovsky, Mónica Giuliano, Silvia Pérez, Sonia Concari , Aldo Sacerdoti and Marcelo Alvarez (Argentina)
• UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT DIFFICULTIES WITH INDEPENDENT AND MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE EVENTS CONCEPTS, by Adriana D'Amelio (Argentina)
• ENHANCING STATISTICS INSTRUCTION IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS: INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT, by Maria Meletiou-Mavrotheris (Cyprus), Efi Paparistodemou (Cyprus) & Despina Stylianou(USA)
• TEACHING STATISTICS MUST BE ADAPTED TO CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES: A Case Study from Hungarian Higher Education, by Andras Komaromi (Hungary)
• STATISTICS TEACHING IN AN AGRICULTURAL UNIVERSITY: A Motivation Problem, by Klara Lokos Toth (Hungary)
• CALCULATING DEPENDENT PROBABILITIES, by Mike Fletcher (UK)
• FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, by Mike Fletcher (UK)
• LEARNING, PARTICIPATION AND LOCAL SCHOOL MATHEMATICS PRACTICE, by Cristina Frade (Brazil) & Konstantinos Tatsis (Greece)
• IF A.B = 0 THEN A = 0 or B = 0? by Cristina Ochoviet(Uruguay) & Asuman Oktaç (Mexico)

Other feature articles in this double-issue include:

• THE ORIGINS OF THE GENUS CONCEPT IN QUADRATIC FORMS, by Mark Beintema & Azar Khosravani (Illinois, USA)
• THE IMPACT OF UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS COURSES ON COLLEGE STUDENT’S GEOMETRIC REASONING STAGES, by Nuh Aydin (Ohio, USA) & Erdogan Halat (Turkey)
• A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF STUDENT’S REPRESENTATIONS FOR DIVISION OF FRACTIONS, by Sylvia Bulgar (USA)
• ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ UNDERSTANDINGS OF ALGEBRAIC GENERALIZATIONS, by Jean E. Hallagan, Audrey C. Rule & Lynn F. Carlson (Oswego, New York)
• COMPARISION OF HIGH ACHIEVERS WITH LOW ACHIEVERS: Discussion of Juter’s (2007) article, by T. P. Hutchinson (Australia)
• FOSTERING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE VERBAL, ALGEBRAIC, AND GEOMETRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF BASIC PLANAR CURVES FOR STUDENT’S SUCCESS IN THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS, by Margo F. Kondratieva & Oana G. Radu (New Foundland, Canada)
• KOREAN TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENT SUCCESS IN MATHEMATICS: Concept versus procedure, by Insook Chung (Notre Dame, USA)
• HOW TO INCREASE MATHEMATICAL CREATIVITY- AN EXPERIMENT, by Kai Brunkalla (Ohio, USA)
• CATCH ME IF YOU CAN! by Steve Humble (UK)
• A TRAILER, A SHOTGUN, AND A THEOREM OF PYTHAGORAS, by William H. Kazez (Georgia, USA)

IJSME, February 2009

International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education has already released the February issue (Number 1) of 2009. The issue contains the following articles:

• A comparative study of the effects of a concept mapping enhanced laboratory experience on Turkish high school students’ understanding of acid-base chemistry, by Haluk Özmen, GÖkhan DemİrcİoĞlu and Richard K. Coll
• Development of Student Understanding of Outcomes Involving Two or More Dice, by Jane M. Watson and Ben A. Kelly
• Approaches to the Teaching of Creative and Non-Creative Mathematical Problems, by Mei-Shiu Chiu
• Teaching Deductive Reasoning to Pre-service Teachers: Promises and Constraints, by Kostas Hatzikiriakou and Panayiota Metallidou
• Students’ Alternative Conceptions about Electricity and Effect of Inquiry-Based Teaching Strategies, by Nada Chatila Afra, Iman Osta and Wassim Zoubeir
• Student-teachers’ Dialectically Developed Motivation for Promoting Student-led Science Projects, by J. Lawrence Bencze and G. Michael Bowen
• An Exploratory Study of Mathematics Test Results: What is the Gender Effect? by Simon Goodchild and Barbro Grevholm
• The Numeracies of Boatbuilding: New Numeracies Shaped by Workplace Technologies, by Robyn Zevenbergen and Kelly Zevenbergen
• The Development of an Instrument for a Technology-integrated Science Learning Environment, by Weishen Wu, Huey-Por Chang and Chorng-Jee Guo
  

ESM, January 2009

Educational Studies in Mathematics has already released the first issue of 2009. In addition to Norma Presmeg's editorial, the issue contains the following articles:

• Cognitive styles, dynamic geometry and measurement performance, by Demetra Pitta-Pantazi and Constantinos Christou
• Embodied design: constructing means for constructing meaning, by Dor Abrahamson
• Constructing competence: an analysis of student participation in the activity systems of mathematics classrooms, by Melissa Gresalfi, Taylor Martin, Victoria Hand and James Greeno
• Every unsuccessful problem solver is unsuccessful in his or her own way: affective and cognitive factors in proving, by Fulvia Furinghetti and Francesca Morselli
  

TMME, No 1/2, 2009

The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast is about to publish issues 1 and 2 of 2009. You can find them in print or in electronic format quite soon. Before they arrive at these web sites, you can take a look at the table of contents, or you can read the editorial below:

TMME 2 Article 0 Editorial Pp.1 2

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Mathematics in everyday life - a PhD thesis lives on!

Normally, a PhD thesis is seldom read by many people, and years of work often end up in a drawer. My own thesis was published in a very limited number, and most of these disappeared during the day of my defense. About a year ago, I decided to publish my PhD thesis on Scribd, because - well mainly because I wanted more people to read it, of course!

Since then, my thesis - a 300 page long thesis in mathematics education - has been viewed 2779 times (as of writing), downloaded 4 times, liked by 4 people and 18 people have added the thesis to their favorites. It has also been awarded to the hot-list on Scribd. Although these numbers are not fantastic, I think it is pretty good for such a thesis. If you are interested in taking a look for yourself, you can either click on the link above, or you can read the embedded document below. If you rather want to read in fullscreen, click here. If you want to download it, click here (pdf).

Mathematics in everyday life - A study of beliefs and actions

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Mathematics Science education mathematics

Holidays are approaching...

The holidays are approaching, and the Christmas bells have almost started ringing in my house. In that connection, I am going to inform the readers of Mathematics Education Research Blog that the next two weeks are probably going to be a bit slower than usual here. Most of the main journals have also entered a slow period it seems, so this might work out fine.

I am planning to write something during Christmas break, but the pace will be slower. If you want to make sure that you don't miss all the important new articles that appear in the next two weeks, you might want to take a look at this page! This is a shared page from my Google Reader account, which is automatically updated with news from most of the journals I follow (those that have an RSS feed). No matter how slow my own pace is, this page will always be updated.

If you still need something more to read during Christmas break, you might want to take a look at the 630+ references that I have stored in my CiteULike account, or the 275+ bookmarks related to mathematics in my Delicious account. You might also be interested in taking a look at the list of academic journals in mathematics education, that I created over at Wikipedia the other day (and possibly contributing to the expansion of the list)!

Merry Christmas to all!

NCTM E-workshops

If you would like to learn more about teaching mathematics, a good idea might be to participate in an e-workshop! NCTM are going to organize several such workshops in 2009. If you want to learn more you might want to check out their website.

Reading tips: Branford (1908)

Many great books have been written, and an increasing number are becoming part of the public domain. One of them, which I would like to point your attention to, is a classical book written by Benchara Branford in 1908! The title of the book is: "A Study of Mathematical Education, including The Teaching of Arithmetic". Besides being an important book in the history of mathematics education, it also provides a nice insight into the teaching of mathematics as it was 100 years ago!

Personally, I think his very direct connection between the historical development of mathematics and the child's development of mathematical thinking (often referred to as "the genetic approach" in mathematics education) is interesting.

A Study of Mathematical Education

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Teaching Education Mathematics Education

If you want to read the book in fullscreen format, click here. For download (pdf), click here.

ATM eNews

ATM eNews is available, and it was published yesterday. Those who subscribe to the newsletter have probably got an email about it already, and those who don't can read the entire newsletter online. The eNews contains lots of useful information about new publications, conferences, etc. If you don't know, ATM is the Association of Teachers of Mathematics (in UK), and it has about 4000 members. ATM has an annual conference, which might be worth paying attention to. Online registration is now open.