• EPISTEMOLOGICAL OBSTACLES IN COMING TO UNDERSTAND THE LIMIT OF A FUNCTION AT UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL: A CASE FROM THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LESOTHO, by Eunice Kolitsoe Moru
• Talking Physics during Small-Group Work with Context-Rich Problems – Analysed from an Ownership Perspective, by Margareta Enghag, Peter Gustafsson and Gunnar Jonsson
• HISTORY AS A PLATFORM FOR DEVELOPING COLLEGE STUDENTS’ EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS OF MATHEMATICS, by Po-Hung Liu
• USING COMBINATORIAL APPROACH TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LEARNING OF THE DISTRIBUTIVE LAW AND MULTIPLICATIVE IDENTITIES, by Yu-Ling Tsai and Ching-Kuch Chang
• The Factors Related to Preschool Children and Their Mothers on Children’s Intuitional Mathematics Abilities, by Yıldız Güven
• THE POWER OF LEARNING GOAL ORIENTATION IN PREDICTING STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT, by Chuan-Ju Lin, Pi-Hsia Hung, Su-Wei Lin, Bor-Hung Lin and Fou-Lai Lin
• K-12 Science and Mathematics Teachers’ Beliefs About and Use of Inquiry in the Classroom, by Jeff C. Marshall, Robert Horton, Brent L. Igo and Deborah M. Switzer
• Question Posing, Inquiry, and Modeling Skills of Chemistry Students in the Case-Based Computerized Laboratory Environment, by Zvia Kaberman and Yehudit Judy Dori
• Thinking Journey – a New Mode of Teaching Science, by Yaron Schur and Igal Galili

Reading the articles in this and the next Special Issue will very quickly show that social justice is difficult to define, in part because it not only depends on one’s own world view, but also it depends somewhat on the situation being analysed. Social justice is a relative concept; what is unjust to some, is not unjust to others; whether we consider something is socially unjust or relationally unjust will likewise differ.

In relation to this topic, three articles have been published online the last couple of days:

• Elizabeth de Freitas and Betina Zolkower have written an article called Using social semiotics to prepare mathematics teachers to teach for social justice.
• Raymond Brown has written an article called Teaching for social justice: exploring the development of student agency through participation in the literacy practices of a mathematics classroom.
• Amal Hussain Alajmi has written an article called Addressing computational estimation in the Kuwaiti curriculum: teachers’ views.

You can go to the links above to read more about these articles.

The authors present an analysis of portfolio entries submitted by candidates seeking certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards in the area of Early Adolescence/Mathematics. Analyses of mathematical features revealed that the tasks used in instruction included a range of mathematics topics but were not consistently intellectually challenging. Analyses of key pedagogical features of the lesson materials showed that tasks involved hands-on activities or real-world contexts and technology but rarely required students to provide explanations or demonstrate mathematical reasoning. The findings suggest that, even in lessons that teachers selected for display as best practice examples of teaching for understanding, innovative pedagogical approaches were not systematically used in ways that supported students’ engagement with cognitively demanding mathematical tasks.

• Lisen Häggblom: Lärarstuderandes syn på lärande i matematik.
• Marit Johnsen-Høines: Dialogical inquiry in practice teaching.
• Per Nilsson: Operationalizing the analytical construct of contextualization.

By following the links above, you can read the abstracts of the articles. Unfortunately, the entire articles are only available in the printed version of the journal.

• Online Resources in Mathematics, Teachers’ Geneses and Didactical Techniques, by Laetitia Bueno-Ravel and Ghislaine Gueudet
• Learning Electricity with NIELS: Thinking with Electrons and Thinking in Levels, by Pratim Sengupta and Uri Wilensky
• Agents with Attitude: Exploring Coombs Unfolding Technique with Agent-Based Models, by Michelle Hoda Wilkerson
• Computational Diversions: Web Fame, Web Games, by Michael Eisenberg

Even before steel was a topic of formal study for structural engineers, the brilliant eighteenth century Swiss mathematician and physicist, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), investigated the theory governing the elastic behaviour of columns, the results of which are incorporated into the American Institute of Steel Construction’s (AISC’s) Bible: the Steel Construction Manual. Each semester as the author teaches the introductory undergraduate ‘Structural Steel Design’ course, when arriving at the subject of compression members, he insists on first explaining in detail the mathematical contributions of Euler to the theory of elastic buckling, based on the subject of differential equations-the contents of which constitute this article-before commencing with issues pertaining to engineering design.

In this article, I draw on post-structural and feminist epistemologies to analyse interview data from two prospective teachers on a primary education degree. Specifically I use Foucauldian critical discourse analysis to discuss the competing discourses of the masculine mathematician and the feminine primary school teacher. The initial purpose of the article is to deconstruct the themes of control, choice and confidence, which I argue are prevalent within mathematical discourses within our current neoliberal society. A further aim of the article is to explore the representation of discourse and data within educational texts, which I do by experimenting with the language used throughout.

Using a national sample of high school mathematics and science teachers from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), we find that authority (teacher leadership and control over school and classroom policy), not power (frequency of evaluation of teachers and professional development, and ease of dismissal of teachers), is associated with teachers taking the kind of professional development that we know improves teaching and learning-activities focused on subject matter content and instructional strategies, as well as active interactions with other teachers around curriculum and instruction. Similarly, we find that stability (measured by reduced teacher turnover), not the consistency of professional development with other reforms, is associated with taking effective professional development.

This documentary account situates teacher educator, prospective teacher, and elementary students’ mathematical thinking in relation to one another, demonstrating shared challenges to learning mathematics. It highlights an important mathematics reasoning skill—creating and analyzing representations. The author examines responses of prospective teachers to a visual representation task and, in turn, their examination of school children’s responses to mathematical tasks. The analysis revealed the initial tendency of prospective teachers to create pictorial representations and highlights the importance of looking beyond the pictures created to how prospective teachers use mathematical models. In addition, the challenges prospective teachers face in moving beyond a ruled-based conception of mathematics and a right/wrong framework for assessing student work are documented. Findings suggest that analyzing representations helps prospective teachers (and teacher educators) rethink their teaching practices by engaging with a culture of teaching focused on reading for multiple meanings and posing questions about student thinking and curriculum materials.