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Grounded in problem-based learning and with respect to four mathematics domains (arithmetic, random events and counting, number theory, and geometry), we designed a series of programming-based learning tasks for middle school students to co-develop computational thinking (CT) and corresponding mathematical thinking. Various CT concepts and practices articulating the designated mathematical problems were involved in the tasks. In addition to delineating the design of these learning tasks, this paper presents a qualitative study in which we examined 74 students' learning outcomes and characterized their CT and mathematical thinking co-development as they accomplished the tasks. The research results demonstrate the codevelopment of both mathematics- and CT-related concepts and practices in the four mathematics domains. Two types of interactions are identified: (i) applying mathematical knowledge to construct CT artifacts and (ii) generating new mathematical knowledge with CT practice. The new insights provided by the present work are threefold. First, from a mathematical learning perspective, the nature of the solution processes of the designed problems should not be immediately obvious. Second, from a technology-enhanced learning perspective, the dynamic representations and immediate visual feedback afforded by the programming tool are beneficial to student learning. Third, from a pedagogical perspective, the room for customization offered by both the designed problems and programming tools can provide affordances for learning.

Mental brackets constitute an idiosyncratic use of brackets sometimes used to evaluate arithmetic expressions and are closely connected with students' structure sense. The relevant literature describes the use of mental brackets focusing on primary school students and in the context of arithmetic. Using 181 high school students' solutions to seven tasks, this paper attempts to broaden the scope of mental brackets. It investigates high school students' mental brackets use and their presence in different mathematical domains. The findings show that high school students use mental brackets in the context of arithmetic while evaluating arithmetic expressions, and in the context of algebra, mainly when substituting numerical values in the variables. Moreover, the analysis provides further insights into the use of mental brackets. Sometimes they are applied to the whole expression (global mental brackets) and other times just to parts of it (local mental brackets).

The way mathematics teaching and learning activities are presented to learners can make them hate or like the subject. The question of accomplishing the mathematics education of the learner from primary to post-secondary school levels is one which necessarily tasks, not only the teacher's stock of mathematical knowledge but also his skill, his method of approach and finally his handling of the processes of feedback mechanisms. This paper outlines some of the fundamental problems confronting mathematics teachers and learners, and by means of previously published work, it proposed some useful suggestions which have gained support through classroom implementation.

This paper resulted from an unfolding of an ongoing doctoral research that deals with the characterization of a specific type of arithmetic in times of Brazilian industrial education, that is, between 1942 and 1968. The objective is to analyze knowledge produced by Roberto Mange for training, aiming not only to recognize them as such, but also to situate the social place of the producing agent, Roberto Mange, an "expert" in industrial education. The concepts mobilized are in line with the studies by Hofstetter, Schneuwly and Freymond (2017), and the methodological guidelines of Morais (2020). The research reveals that Roberto Mange introduced in Brazil new ways of teaching Mathematics, using the Occupational Methodological Series, the Instruction Sheets, and the Individualized Instruction Method. The conclusion is that Roberto Mange is an "expert" in industrial education.

This paper aims to characterise an indicator of the development of the number sequence scheme among students at the level of Compulsory Secondary Education (14-16 years old students). To do so, we use a scheme development proposed by the APOS theory to characterise students' use of relations between mathematical elements when solving a mathematical task. We use a qualitative methodology and the data collection instruments are a written questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. In this work we show the questionnaire task that provides analytical expressions and ask students to determine which of them numbers sequences are. We find that students' use of logical implication when solving tasks related to number sequences is an indicator of the development of the scheme. This indicator helps to locate the transition mechanisms between the levels of development of the number sequence scheme. Moreover, our research shows that arithmetic and geometric progressions play a key role as an indicator of the development of the number sequence scheme.

Factors and multiples are important aspects of mathematical structure that support the understanding of a range of other ideas including multiplication and division, and later on, factorization. At primary school level, it is important that factors and multiples are taught as a connected enterprise and as vital parts of the multiplicative situation; that is multiplication and division. The primary objective of the study on which this paper is based was to determine the extent of children's understanding of factors and multiples. A written quiz containing questions about factors and multiples and asking for children to explain their responses, was administered. Results suggest that the language involved with factors and multiples may play a role in the extent to which children develop a conceptual understanding of them. Also, most children know some things about factors and multiples but struggled to connect and articulate ideas when factors and multiples were presented in a different context. In conclusion, the inconsistency of participant responses suggests that teaching about factors and multiples needs to emanate from a more conceptual and connected standpoint.

People frequently encounter numeric information in medical and health contexts. In this paper, we investigated the math factors that are associated with decision-making accuracy in health and non-health contexts. This is an important endeavor given that there is relatively little cross-talk between math cognition researchers and those studying health decision making. Ninety adults (M = 37 years; 86% White; 51% male) answered hypothetical health decision-making problems, and 93 adults (M = 36 years; 75% White; 42% males) answered a non-health decision-making problem. All participants were recruited from an online panel. Each participant completed a battery of tasks involving objective math skills (e.g., whole number and fraction estimation, comparison, arithmetic fluency, objective numeracy, etc.) and subjective ratings of their math attitudes, anxiety, and subjective numeracy. In separate regression models, we identified which objective and subjective math measures were associated with health and non-health decision-making accuracy. Magnitude comparison accuracy, multi-step arithmetic accuracy, and math anxiety accounted for significant variance in health decision-making accuracy, whereas attention to math, as illustrated in open-ended strategy reports, was the only significant predictor of non-health decision-making accuracy. Importantly, reliable and valid measures from the math cognition literature were more strongly related to health decision-making accuracy than were commonly used subjective and objective measures of numeracy. These results have a practical implication: Understanding the math factors that are associated with health decision-making performance could inform future interventions to enhance comprehension of numeric health information.

In learning, errors are ubiquitous and inevitable. As these errors may signal otherwise latent cognitive processes, tutors--and students alike--can greatly benefit from the information they provide. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate the Systematic Error Tracing (SET) model that identifies the possible causes of systematically observed errors in domains where items are susceptible to most or all causes and errors can be explained by multiple causes. We apply the model to single-digit multiplication, a domain that is very suitable for the model, is well-studied, and allows us to analyze over 25,000 error responses from 335 learners. The model, derived from the Ising model popular in physics, makes use of a bigraph that links errors to causes. The error responses were taken from Math Garden, a computerized adaptive practice environment for arithmetic that is widely used in the Netherlands. We discuss and evaluate various model configurations with respect to the ranking of recommendations and calibration of probability estimates. The results show that the SET model outranks a majority vote baseline model when more than a single recommendation is considered. Finally, we contrast the SET model to similar approaches and discuss limitations and implications.

Children's multiplicative thinking as the recognition of equal group structures and the enumeration of the composite units was the subject of this research. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Multiplication and Division Investigations project. The results were obtained from a small sample of Australian children (n = 21) in their first year of school (mean age 5 years 6 months) who participated in a teaching experiment of five lessons taught by their classroom teacher. The tasks introduced children to the "equal groups" aspect of multiplication. A theoretical framework of constructivist learning, together with research literature underpinning early multiplicative thinking, tasks, and children's thinking, was used to design the research. Our findings indicate that young children could imagine equal group structures and, in doing so, recognise and enumerate composite units. As the children came to these tasks without any prior formal instruction, it seemed that they had intuitive understandings of equal group structures based on their life experiences. We argue that the implications for teaching include creating learning provocations that elicit children's early ideas of multiplication, visualisation, and abstraction. The research has also shown the importance of observing children, listening to their explanations of their thinking, and using insights provided by their drawings.

In current teaching materials, when using Dedekind cuts to construct real numbers, the definition of a Dedekind cut is always involved in defining addition and multiplication. In this paper, as it is done in many current textbooks, Dedekind cuts are used to construct the set of real numbers. Then the order in it is defined, and the least-upper-bound property, as well as the density properties of rational cuts in the set of real numbers, is established. Later, when defining addition and multiplication and establishing relative properties, the definition of cut will not be used again. This makes the process simpler and easier to understand.

In an interplay between the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic and topology, this paper presents material for a capstone seminar that expands on ideas from number theory, analysis, and linear algebra. It is designed to generate an immersive way of learning in which students discover new connections between familiar concepts, create definitions, and investigate non-standard questions. The ideas are arranged as a series of questions for students to explore, with expositions to the instructor on how to guide them in looking for answers. The investigations culminate in a satisfying outcome: that partition topologies are the same as unique factorization topologies, those that satisfy our topological version of the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.

Programming is an interdisciplinary practice with applications in both mathematics and computer science. Mathematics concerns rigor, abstraction, and generalization. Computer science predominantly concerns efficiency, concreteness, and physicality. This makes programming a medium for problem solving that mediates between mathematics and computer science in intriguing ways. Behind programming practices is computational thinking (CT), a mode of thinking involved in formulating and solving problems so that the solutions could be represented and carried out by computing means. In this paper, CT is seen as a boundary object connecting mathematics and computer science in a school problem-solving context. In particular, we examine and analyse middle school students' work upon engaging in mathematical problem solving-in a programming environment, taking CT as a boundary object embedded in the block-based programming environment, Scratch. The analysis is guided by observing boundary crossing features of CT in the students' artefacts produced in Scratch while solving mathematical problems related to symmetry and arithmetic sequence. The findings of this study open up new dimensions to explore CT as a boundary object in integrated STEM pedagogy.

Soroban abacus training is called as mental arithmetic training in our country. It is known for mental arithmetic to increase the ability of four mode operations. Besides this, how is the situation for the students which are having Soroban abacus training in the terms of problem solving abilities, creativity, development of concepts, attraction towards mathematics, success in other lessons and their social relations with their peers? In order to find an answer to this question, this work studies the answers provided from the teachers of 14 students those are having mental arithmetic training which are aged between 7 and 12. In order to reach these students, the snow ball method which is a kind of improbable sampling methods had been used. In this study for the students which are having Soroban abacus training are observed for the effect of Soroban abacus training for their problem solving abilities, creativity levels, understanding of the concepts, their attraction towards mathematics lesson, their success status for the lessons other than mathematics and their social relations with their peers. For the areas mentioned above, the answers and comments from mathematics and form teachers of the 14 students that are having Soroban Abacus training are collected. Descriptive analysis had been conducted for the results obtained from these interviews. As a result, relying on the reviews and comments obtained from the teachers, it can be said that the students which are having Soroban abacus training are performing better than their peers in terms of the areas mentioned above. [Paper presented at the International Conference on Education in Mathematics, Science & Technology (ICEMST) (2015).]

The article presents old books bound in Italian paper bindings. The works cited include a book of arithmetic for the instruction of youth tied in three joined scraps of a gilt embossed purple paper and a book which contains explanations of dreams bound in wood-block printed paper wrappers with blue triangles. Information regarding the books' titles and dates, which have accumulated over thirty years, is outlined.

When a number sentence includes more than one operation, students are taught to follow the rules for the order of operations to get the correct result. In this context, brackets are used to determine the operations that should be calculated first. However, it seems that the written format of an arithmetical expression has an impact on the way students evaluate this expression. It also seems that a connection exists between this way of evaluation and an understanding of structure. Both issues are examined in this paper. A number of arithmetical expressions in a rational form were given to primary school students from Greece and Sweden. The collected findings strengthen our hypothesis that this rational form of the arithmetical expressions was of critical importance for the students' decision on how to evaluate these expressions. They temporarily put aside their knowledge about the rules for the order of operations. Instead, the way they evaluated the expressions indicates an implicit use of what we call in this paper "mental" brackets. It is very likely that the use of these "mental" brackets is closely connected with students' structure sense.

Existing research suggests that young children can develop a partial understanding of the equal sign as an operator rather than as a relational symbol of equivalence. This partial understanding can be the result of overemphasis on canonical equation syntaxes of the type a + b = c in elementary school mathematics. This paper presents an examination of context and syntax nuances of relevant sections from the grade 1 Greek series of textbooks and workbooks. Using a conceptual framework of context variation, the analysis shows qualitative differences between equations of similar syntax and provides a nuanced determination of contextual and structural aspects of 'variation' in how the equal sign is presented in elementary mathematics. The paper proposes that since equations have context-specific meanings, context variations should constitute a separate element of analysis when investigating how the equal sign is presented. The implication for practice and future research is that nuanced considerations of equation syntax within varied contexts are needed for elaborating analyses of the equal sign presentation that move beyond dichotomized categorizations of canonical/non-canonical syntaxes.

George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Forms was first published in 1969. In the fifty years since its publication, it has influenced mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, and sociologists. Its influence on mathematics education has been negligible. In this paper, I present a brief introduction to the theory and its philosophical underpinnings. And I set out an argument why Laws of Form should be given more attention in mathematics education.

During the sixteenth century, a relevant number of books related to practical arithmetic were published in Spain. This paper presents a comparative study that aims to identify the object and target of five old mathematics books and the main contents of these books. In order to do so, all the contents and all the examples found in five arithmetic books written during the first half of the 16th century were identified and categorised. A historical-mathematical analysis using a content analysis technique was then applied. The results show the authors' concerns about mathematics at the time and the different contents that were included in some arithmetic books of this century.

Our research focuses on developing elementary students' mental computation skills with the help of card games. Choosing this area of study was motivated by our personal experiences, namely, that mathematics programmes of study do not lay emphasis on this aspect; there are too few hours dedicated to developing this skill, and several mental computation strategies are not presented in the classroom. As a result, students struggle with mental computation, a basic skill needed in our day-to-day life, and a relevant basis for further mathematical knowledge, computation competence, and higher order thinking skills. In order to develop this skill, we have transformed well-known card games into didactic games, which encourage development almost unnoticeably, given the fact that children love to play, they need play. We have devised five new, appealing tools, with different levels of difficulty, suitable for developing mental computation skills in an attractive way. This paper presents an experiment involving second grade (8-9 years old) students. Two experimental groups were involved. The aim was to investigate whether mental computation is more efficient when using the traditional method or when using card games. We hypothesized that using card games might prove helpful in developing mental computation skills.

In this paper, we describe an experiment in using history to work on problem-solving and the relationship between arithmetic and algebra. The students involved attended the first year of the Italian upper secondary school (grade 9). The original sources we used are problems from Italian treatises on arithmetic and algebra that appeared in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. At the beginning, we present these treatises, which belong to a widespread mathematical tradition. We then describe the classroom experiment: we administered 14 problems from ancient treatises accompanied by the request to solve them and write impressions and comments. Data were collected through written protocols and interviews. The analysis of the results focused on the strategies implemented in solving the problems, with particular reference to the use of arithmetic and algebra, and on the perception of the cultural aspect introduced by these problems in the students' approach to mathematics. The findings show the difficulties of some students on topics, such as fractions and direct proportionality, which should have been acquired in earlier school years. Combining the use of history with aspects of research in mathematics education allowed us to outline some teaching implications linked to the use of history.

Constantly on the lookout for Canadian mathematics education matters, because if Canadian mathematics education matters then Canadian mathematics education matters, three young university bookstore employees, university students, unable to make proper change when I handed them a five dollar bill for a sticker I was purchasing for my laptop, absolutely crushed my spirit. As they say though, it is not what happens to you, rather it is how you react to what happened to you. As such, rising from what I am now calling "the sticker incident," this article is a many part investigation into the oft-heard phrase "Damn kids these days cannot make change without a calculator." Under examination: the subtraction skills of a particular subset of adult employees not often asked to prove their arithmetic resolve; detailing a personal mistake I made while making change in a big spot; recounting a retelling of a mistake that has haunted someone for many years; detailing which particular customers cashiers need to be worried about when making change (old men with coin purses); wonderings as to why stories about making change do not reflect our now penniless country; and, a brief look at the future responsibilities of cashless immigrants. With this particular matter now in the rearview mirror, I am back in the wild looking for other Canadian mathematics education matters. Stay tuned.

"They are the same" is a phrase that teachers often hear from their students in arithmetic and algebra. But what do students mean when they say this? The present paper researches the notion of sameness within algebraic thinking in the context of generating equivalent numerical equalities. A group of Grade 6 Mexican students (10- to 12-year-olds) was presented with tasks that required transforming the given numerical equalities in such a way as to show their truth-value. The students initially indicated this by calculating and demonstrating that the total was the same on both sides. When asked not to calculate, their approaches evolved into more structural transformations involving decomposition so as to arrive at an equality with the same expression on each side. Students used the language of sameness--both visible and invisible--to describe the truth-value of their transformed expressions and equalities. The visible sameness referred to the resulting identical form of each side of the equality and the invisible sameness to the top-down equivalences that they had generated by their decomposing transformations--both types of sameness being characterized by their hidden numerical values. These findings suggest implications for transitioning to the algebraic domain of equations with their similarly hidden values.

The article discusses the use of paper folding to build understanding of multiplicative relationships, which is a key goal of mathematics instruction in the upper elementary and middle grades. Multiplicative thinking includes comparing numbers through many processes, multiplication and division, ratio, proportions, stretching and shrinking, magnification, scaling, and splitting. The author explains that students tend to reason additively about multiplicative situations first, and are resistant to changing this approach, so teachers need to provide tasks that help students recognize and reason about multiplicative relationships. Paper folding is presented as a means of addressing both the development of multiplicative thinking and facilitating discussion of mathematical problems.