Research in Mathematics Education is the official journal of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics. As of this year, the journal is included in the Routledge system, and it is quite easy to track the latest news from the journal. It has now published the first issue of 2008, which includes several interesting papers. Here is a list of the research papers in issue 1, 2008:

• “I would rather die”: reasons given by 16-year-olds for not continuing their study of mathematics by M. Brown, P. Brown and T. Bibby
• The capacity of two Australian eighth-grade textbooks for promoting proportional reasoning by S. Dole and M. Shield
• “If you can count to ten you can count to infinity really”: fostering conceptual mathematical thinking in the first year of primary school by P. Iannone and A.D. Cockburn
• Student perspectives on the relationship between a curve and its tangent in the transition from Euclidean Geometry to Analysis by I. Biza, C. Christou and T. Zachariades
• The role of affect in learning Real Analysis: a case study by K. Weber
  

Abstract: How teachers think about student thinking informs the ways in which teachers teach. By examining teachers’ anticipation of student thinking we can begin to unpack the assumptions teachers make about teaching and learning. Using a “mathematics for teaching” framework, this research examines and compares the sorts of assumptions teachers make in relation to “student content knowledge” versus actual “learning paths” taken by students. Groups of teachers, who have advanced degrees in mathematics, education, and mathematics education, and tenth grade students engaged in a common mathematical task. Teachers were asked to model, in their completion of the task, possible learning paths students might take. Our findings suggest that teachers, in general, had difficulty anticipating student learning paths. Furthermore, this difficulty might be attributed to their significant “specialized content knowledge” of mathematics. We propose, through this work, that examining student learning paths may be a fruitful locus of inquiry for developing both pre-service and in-service teachers’ knowledge about mathematics for teaching.

“What counts as algebra in the eyes of preservice elementary teachers?” is the title of an article written by Ana C. Stephens for the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. The abstract describes an interesting article, and is enclosed below:

This study examined conceptions of algebra held by 30 preservice
elementary teachers. In addition to exploring participants’ general
“definitions” of algebra, this study examined, in particular, their
analyses of tasks designed to engage students in relational thinking or
a deep understanding of the equal sign as well as student work on these tasks. Findings from this study suggest that preservice elementary
teachers’ conceptions of algebra as subject matter are rather narrow.
Most preservice teachers equated algebra with the manipulation of
symbols. Very few identified other forms of reasoning – in particular,
relational thinking – with the algebra label. Several participants made comments implying that student strategies that demonstrate traditional
symbol manipulation might be valued more than those that demonstrate
relational thinking, suggesting that what is viewed as algebra is what
will be valued in the classroom. This possibility, along with
implications for mathematics teacher education, will be discussed.

Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (JMTE) and ZDM have published some new and interesting online articles:

• “Recruiting and retaining secondary mathematics teachers: lessons learned from an innovative four-year undergraduate program“, is a JMTE-article written by A.F. Artzt and F.R. Curcio. They describe some of the innovative aspects of a NSF funded program (TIME 2000), that was started as a response to the critical shortage of qualified mathematics teachers in the U.S.
• “Imagination as a tool in mathematics teacher education” was written by O. Chapman for JMTE. Chapman describes some of the theory within this field, and he also makes a description of some of his own experiences with a class of prospective mathematics teachers, before he makes connections between other related articles in this forthcoming issue.
• “How are theoretical approaches expressed in research practices? A report on an experience in comparing theoretical approaches with respect to the construction of research problems” is an article written for ZDM by S. Prediger. She explores the idea that theoretical approaches might be usefully compared in terms of the ways in which they lead researchers to construe commonsense classroom problems (quote from the abstract).
• “Toward networking three theoretical approaches: the case of social interactions” was written by I. Kidron et al. and published online (in ZDM) Tuesday, March 4 (all four articles were published at the same date). The discussions in this article was initiated at CERME4 and continued at CERME5, and the focus is on comparing, contrasting and combining different theoretical frameworks that are currently used in mathematics education.

The Journal of Mathematical Behavior has published an online article called “Exploring college students’ mental representations of inferential statistics“. The article is written by N.C. Lavigne, S.J. Salkind and J. Yan, and it reports a case study of how three college students made mental representations of their knowledge about inferential statistics. In the article, they discuss how this knowledge was connected and how it was applied in two problem solving situations. The researchers found that the representations of the students were based on incomplete statistical understanding, and their findings suggest that it could be useful as a diagnostic tool to modify the task format in certain ways.