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With case histories and anecdotes the author describes learning disabled children and their math difficulties explaining a variety of remedial therapies that match particular problems. Although bright in many other respects, some students freeze before a math problem or fail to focus enough to solve it. Through personalized attention some of the children were able to overcome their blocks.

Before students enroll in such college- level mathematics classes as calculus, statistics, or precalculus algebra and trigonometry, they may need to take preliminary courses. These courses cover prealgebra arithmetic or beginning and intermediate algebraic topics commonly offered at the middle and secondary school levels.

ne hot, windy day last summer, Daniel Janzen leaned in through the window of an open-air schoolhouse in northwestern Costa Rica and called to the teacher. The teacher left the blackboard, where he had been working a math problem. After chatting with the teacher for a few minutes in Spanish, Janzen handed him a photocopied note inviting the elementary school students to attend a speech by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez in which Arias was to reaffirm conservation as one of the nation's top priorities. The speech would be given at nearby Santa Rosa National Park, where the class had already studied natural history as part of a new educational program. The invitation was delivered to several other elementary schools in the region, as well as to farmers, politicians, and other local residents.

Self-regulation and self-control methods have been developed primarily in laboratory situations in which subjects are passive or engage in low-demand tasks. In clinical settings self-control techniques are often advocated for handling highly demanding situations. The present study examined the effects of self-regulatory processes on a primary task that requires focused attention and cognitive rehearsal. Ninety-four subjects in a 3(CPAT difficulty) ×3(type of secondary task) factorial design worked on a Continuous Paired Associate Task (CPAT). At regular intervals subjects were given either a selfregulatory task or simple math problems, or a 10-second delay was introduced. After 60 minutes, subjects could continue or quit. CPAT accuracy immediately following the secondary task or the delay decreased significantly in comparison to the preceding or subsequent intervals. Subjects who worked on the easiest CPAT or with the Delay interruption showed significantly smaller decrements in performance. Subjects who were given a self-regulation task completed the fewest trial blocks voluntarily. The detrimental effects of the secondary self-regulation task on a complex cognitive task suggest that the beneficial effects of self-regulatory techniques may be limited. They caution against their therapeutic use in stressful situations that require concurrent performance on a cognitively demanding task.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine how high, average, and low achieving elementary students engage in self-regulation in math. Participants were nine elementary students and their teachers from three different public schools who incorporated the International Baccalaureate Curriculum. Using a microanalytic methodology, students were asked a series of forethought, performance, and self-reflection process items about specific math problem solving. It was hypothesized that high achievers would display more self-regulated learning processes than either average or low achieving students. To provide a more detailed picture of self-regulatory functioning among the different math achievers, a case study of fifth grade students from each achievement level is also presented. Students’ reports of self-regulation were also compared with teacher ratings. Results also revealed that high achievers surpassed average achievers, who in turn surpassed the low achieving student in self-regulation. The results were discussed in terms of Zimmerman's social cognitive model of self-regulation. Implications, limitations, and future research are presented.

It is probably best that I acknowledge quite candidly at the outset that I am not a philosopher by trade or ambition. Nevertheless, when I first read Mr. Cohen’s very interesting paper with some care, I resolved to attempt to prepare the sort of philosophical response his paper warrants. I resolved to attempt to include a number of neat philosophical distinctions and a good bit of sage philosophical advice. Now I mind telling you that my initial attempts to draft such a response always seemed unsatisfactory and incomplete, that the notes on which the distinctions and wisdom began to take shape were often brooded over and discarded, and that the reasons for this frustration were not related to Mr. Cohen’s paper as much as to the concrete reality of living with three children. The chores and pleasures of parenting, tucking my five year old into bed, listening to my eight year old rehearse and destroy a little piece for the piano, and talking over a math problem with my twelve year old, seemed constantly to dash to pieces my pretentions about philosophizing about children. I began to realize that I am both jealous and suspicious of my authority as a parent and that neither my jealousies nor my suspicions are easily rendered into logical justifications. I am jealous and suspicious of the authority I exercise over them, to distribute snacks, to settle disputes, to punish violence and injustice.

In this paper we focus on the organization of activities that produce shared graphical representations on the whiteboard of a CSCL system with dual interaction spaces called VMT Chat, and the ways these representations are used in conjunction with chat postings as semiotic resources by interactants as they jointly make sense of and build upon each other's mathematical statements.