Search

Measures of association, which typically require pairwise data, are widespread in many aspects of educational research. However, due to the need to reduce their content to equal numbers of units of analysis, they are rarely found in the analysis of textbooks. In this paper, we present two methods for overcoming this limitation, one through the use of disjoint sections and the other through the use of overlapping moving averages. Both methods preserve the temporal structure of data and enable researchers to calculate a measure of association which, in this case, is the complementary Euclidean average distance, as an indicator of the books' similarity. We illustrate these approaches by means of a comparative analysis of three commonly-used English and Swedish mathematics textbooks. Analyses were focused on individual tasks, which had all been coded according to the presence or absence of particular characteristics. Both methods produce nearly identical results and are robust with respect to both densely and sparsely occurring characteristics. For both methods, widening the aggregation window results in a slightly increased level of quantified similarity, which is the result of the 'smoothing effect'. We discuss the relation between the window width and the choice of research question.

In this paper we present analyses of three textbooks currently used in the teaching of mathematics to year-one children in England. One is an established English-authored textbook, while the others are Singaporean-authored imports promoted by government as solutions to perceptions of systemic failure. Every task in each textbook was coded against a set of eight number-related competences known to support children's learning in both short and long terms. Such a framework, which is literature-derived and curriculum-independent, enables meaningful comparison of materials deriving from different cultural contexts. Analyses of the proportions of all tasks coded for the different competences showed that none of the three books adequately addresses all eight competences, although the English-authored comes closest. Moving averages, undertaken to show the temporal location of the opportunities presented for children to acquire the eight competences, showed them distributed throughout the school year in the English-authored textbook but only during the first half of the school year in the two Singaporean-authored textbooks. Some implications for the importation of such materials are discussed.

In this paper, we examine the national curricula for primary mathematics for each of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) for the estimation-related opportunities they offer children. Framed against four conceptually and procedurally different forms of estimation (computational, measurement, quantity and number line), the analyses indicate that computational estimation and measurement estimation were addressed in all four curricula, albeit from a skills-acquisition perspective, with only the Scottish offering any meaningful justification for their inclusion. The process of rounding, absent in the Northern Ireland curriculum, was presented as an explicit learning objective in the English, Scottish and Welsh curricula, although it was only the Scottish that made explicit the connections between rounding and computational estimation. In all curricula, both quantity estimation and number line estimation were effectively absent, as was any explicit acknowledgement that learning to estimate, irrespective of its form, has a developmental role in the learning of other mathematical topics.

In this paper, motivated in part by evidence that Swedish teachers are sceptical of parents' abilities to offer appropriate support, we present an exploratory investigation of the activities Swedish parents initiate to facilitate their year-one (first grade) children's learning of mathematics. Data, derived from 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with parents from three demographically different schools, were subjected to constant comparison analyses and yielded three broad categories of activity. These concerned the use of games in the learning of mathematics, contextualised mathematics activities like cooking and shopping, and decontextualised mathematics activities like systematic counting. Collectively, the results indicate that while parents of year-one children are confident supporting their children's learning of mathematics, they are also conscious of the need to avoid both undermining schools' efforts and exacerbating educational inequity. With few exceptions, the activities parents described were age-appropriate and more likely to complement teachers' actions than not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, motivated by the desire to understand which forms of parent-initiated activity are productively implicated in young children's mathematics learning, we present a methodological critique of recent research. Many such studies, based on assumptions that parent-initiated activities can be categorised as formal or informal, direct or indirect, or advanced or basic, exploit surveys to elicit how frequently parents engage their children in various predetermined activities. While such survey data have the potential to yield important insights, the analytical procedures typically employed prevent them. Studies involving factor analyses yield uninterpretable factors, which are then used to create summative variables based on the scores of individual activities. Other studies, drawing on untested preconceptions, simply create summative variables. In all cases, these summative variables are based on such a wide range of qualitatively different activities that labels like formal or informal become arbitrary and the potential of individual activities to support learning gets lost beneath colleagues' desires for statistical significance. In closing, we ask colleagues, albeit somewhat rhetorically, what is the purpose of such research? Is it to identify those activities that support learning or to offer statistically robust factors, which, due to the diversity of activities embedded within them, offer few useful insights? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present statistical analyses of three textbooks used by Swedish teachers to support year one children's learning of mathematics. One, Eldorado, is authored by Swedish teachers, another, Favorit, is a Swedish adaptation of a popular Finnish series and the third, Singma, is a Swedish adaptation of a Singapore series. Data were coded against the eight categories of foundational number sense, which are the number-related competences literature has shown to be essential for the later mathematical success of year one learners. Two analyses were undertaken; the first was a frequency analysis of the tasks coded for a particular category, the second was a time-series analysis highlighting the temporal location of such opportunities. The frequency analyses identified statistically significant differences with respect to children's opportunities to acquire foundational number sense. Additionally, the time series showed substantial differences in the ways in which such tasks were located in the structure of the textbooks. Such differences, we argue, offer substantial didactical challenges to teachers trying to adapt their practices to the expectations of such imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the content of school textbooks, particularly in a time of cross-cultural borrowing, is a growing field restricted by the tools currently available. In this paper, drawing on the analyses of three English year-one mathematics textbooks, we show how two approaches to the analysis of sequential data not only supplement conventional frequency analyses but highlight trends in the content of such textbooks hidden from frequency analyses alone. The first, moving averages, is conventionally used in science to eliminate noise and demonstrate trends in data. The second, Lorenz curves, is typically found in the social sciences to compare different forms of social phenomena. Both, as we show, extend the range of questions that can be meaningfully asked of textbooks. Finally, we speculate as to how both approaches can be used with other forms of ordered classroom data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that an appropriately developed foundational number sense (FONS), or the ability to operate flexibly with number and quantity, is a powerful predictor of young children's later mathematical achievement. However, until now not only has FONS been definitionally elusive but instruments for identifying opportunities for children to acquire its various components have been missing from the classroom observation tools available. In this paper, drawing on a constant comparison analysis of appropriate literature, we outline the development of an eight dimensional FONS framework. We then show, by applying this framework to three culturally diverse European grade one lessons, one English, one Hungarian and one Swedish, that it is both straightforwardly operationalised and amenable to cross cultural analyses of classroom practice. Some implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses four questions concerning the influence of culture on mathematics teachers' professional practice. Firstly, drawing on categorical data yielded by the application of low inference coding schedule to video recordings of sequences of lessons taught by case study teachers on four common topics in England, Flanders, Hungary and Spain, we undertook an exploratory factor analysis to examine the ways in which such coded variables interact. This process yielded five factors, each of which was interpretable against the literature and highlighted the extent to which dichotomisations of mathematics teaching as reform or traditional are not necessarily helpful, not least because all project teachers exhibited characteristics of both. Secondly, factors scores were analysed by nationality to reveal culturally located practices resonant with the available literature. Thirdly, cluster analyses yielded four well-defined cross-cultural clusters of episodes, each indicative of particular didactical perspectives that appeared to challenge the exclusivity of these culturally located practices. Finally, the key methodological finding was that the manner in which data are analysed influences greatly the outcomes of comparative mathematics research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we compare how three teachers, one from each of Finland, Flanders and Hungary, introduce linear equations to grade 8 students. Five successive lessons were videotaped and analysed qualitatively to determine how teachers, each of whom was defined against local criteria as effective, addressed various literature-derived equations-related problems. The analyses showed all four sequences passing through four phases that we have called definition, activation, exposition and consolidation. However, within each phase were similarities and differences. For example, all three constructed their exposition around algebraic equations and, in so doing, addressed concerns relating to students’ procedural perspectives on the equals sign. All three teachers invoked the balance as an embodiment for teaching solution strategies to algebraic equations, confident that the failure of intuitive strategies necessitated a didactical intervention. Major differences lay in the extent to which the balance was sustained and teachers’ variable use of realistic word problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]