Over the last years, the focus on gestures in mathematics education research has been growing. Anna Sfard has now written an article that was published in Educational Studies in Mathematics a couple of days ago. The article has a focus on this particular field of research, and it is entitled: What’s all the fuss about gestures? A commentary. Here is the abstract:

While reading the articles assembled in this volume, one cannot help asking Why gestures? What’s all the fuss about them? In the last few years, the fuss is, indeed, considerable, and not just here, in this special issue, but also in research on learning and teaching at large. What changed? After all, gestures have been around ever since the birth of humanity, if not much longer, but until recently, not many students of human cognition seemed to care. In this commentary, while reporting on what I saw while scrutinizing this volume for an answer, I will share some thoughts on the relationship between gesturing and speaking and about their relative roles in mathematical thinking.

Carolyn R. Kilday and Mable B. Kinzie have written an article called An Analysis of Instruments that Measure the Quality of Mathematics Teaching in Early Childhood. This article was published online in Early Childhood Education Journal on Friday. A starting point for this article (both authors work at the University of Virginia, in the U.S.) is that “the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (2008) has recently called for more research to determine the skills and practices underlying teacher effectiveness, and on methods for developing this capacity”. The article gives an interesting overview of some of the major instruments for evaluating and measuring teaching quality in the U.S. Here is the abstract of the article:

The evaluation of teaching quality in mathematics has become increasingly important following research reports indicating that preschoolers are developmentally able to engage in mathematic thought and that child performance in mathematics at this level is a strong predictor of later school achievement. As attention turns to early mathematics education, so too does the focus on teaching quality. This paper reviews nine instruments designed to measure mathematics teaching quality—their theoretical bases, foci, and psychometrics—and examines their appropriateness for administration in early childhood settings. Three of the nine measures are identified as having highly desirable characteristics, with one of them specifically designed for early childhood administration. The measures, our review process, and our recommendations for practice are presented. As school divisions and teacher educators examine teaching quality, they will be better able to support their teachers’ practice, and better able to reap the benefits in improved child outcomes.

Along with Educational Studies in Mathematics and Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, ZDM has also recently published their November issue of this year. This issue contains a long list of interesting articles:

• Mathematics education: new perspectives on gender, by Gilah Leder and Helen Forgasz
• Moving towards a feminist epistemology of mathematics, by Leone Burton†
• The emergence of women on the international stage of mathematics education, by Fulvia Furinghetti
• Israeli Jewish and Arab students’ gendering of mathematics, by Helen J. Forgasz and David Mittelberg
• Gender, technology and attitude towards mathematics: a comparative longitudinal study with Mexican students, by Sonia Ursini and Gabriel Sánchez
• On the role of computers and complementary situations for gendering in mathematics classrooms, by Helga Jungwirth
• Exploring gender factors related to PISA 2003 results in Iceland: a youth interview study, by Olof Bjorg Steinthorsdottir and Bharath Sriraman
• Gender differences in the mathematics achievements of German primary school students: results from a German large-scale study, by Henrik Winkelmann, Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Alexander Robitzsch
• Adolescent girls’ construction of moral discourses and appropriation of primary identity in a mathematics classroom, by Jae Hoon Lim
• Images of mathematicians: a new perspective on the shortage of women in mathematical careers, by Katrina Piatek-Jimenez
• Equity in mathematics education: unions and intersections of feminist and social justice literature, by Laura Jacobsen Spielman
• Progress and stagnation of gender equity: contradictory trends within mathematics research and education in Sweden, by Gerd Brandell
• Gender in mathematics relationality: counseling underprepared college students, by Jillian M. Knowles
• Stepping beyond high school mathematics: a case study of high school women, by Charlene Morrow and Inga Schowengerdt
• Goos, Stillman and Vale: teaching secondary mathematics: research and practice for the 21st century, by Gaye Williams

The theme of this issue is: Mathematics Education: New Perspectives on Gender.

The November issue of Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education has been published, and it contains the following set of articles:

• Education for the knowledge to teach mathematics: it all has to come together, by Peter Sullivan
• Teachers’ perceptions of assessments of their mathematical knowledge in a professional development course, by Michelle T. Chamberlin, Jeff D. Farmer and Jodie D. Novak
• Learning mathematics for teaching in the student teaching experience: two contrasting cases, by Blake E. Peterson and Steven R. Williams
• Mathematical belief change in prospective primary teachers, by Peter Grootenboer
• Toward a framework for the development of mathematical knowledge for teaching, by Jason Silverman and Patrick W. Thompson

Personally, I find this issue particularly interesting, as it has a strong focus on mathematical content knowledge as well as beliefs. These are the main focus areas of my own research as well. I especially find the article by Silverman and Thompson interesting, and their attempt to approach a framework for the development of mathematical knowledge for teaching provides a nice overview of the research that has been done after Lee Shulman presented his ideas about Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

The November issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics has arrived. It contains the following articles:

• Abstraction and consolidation of the limit procept by means of instrumented schemes: the complementary role of three different frameworks, by Ivy Kidron
• Students’ images and their understanding of definitions of the limit of a sequence, by Kyeong Hah Roh
• Deductive reasoning: in the eye of the beholder, by Michal Ayalon and Ruhama Even
• Signifying “students”, “teachers” and “mathematics”: a reading of a special issue, by Tony Brown
• On semiotics and subjectivity: a response to Tony Brown’s “signifying ‘students’, ‘teachers’, and ‘mathematics’: a reading of a special issue”, by Norma Presmeg and Luis Radford
• Review of the proceedings of the 2001, 2003 and 2005 French summer schools in Didactics of Mathematics, by Rudolf Sträßer
• Brian Griffiths (1927–2008) – his pioneering contributions to mathematics and education, by Keith Jones and Joanna Mamona-Downs

Brian Greer’s article, which was published in ZDM two days ago, surely has an interesting title: Estimating Iraqi deaths: a case study with implications for mathematics education. The focus of this article is also interesting:

In this paper, I present an account of attempts to quantify deaths of Iraqis during the occupation by US and other forces since the invasion of March 2003, and of the reactions to these attempts. This story illuminates many aspects of current socio-political reality, particularly, but by no means exclusively, in the United States. Here, these aspects are selectively discussed in relation to the overarching themes of what the story illuminates about the uses of statistical information in society and about shortcomings in mathematics education.

Yeping Li and Gerald Kulm have written an interesting article that was published in ZDM on Tuesday. The article is entitled Knowledge and confidence of pre-service mathematics teachers: the case of fraction division. Here is the abstract of the article:

To make teacher preparation and professional development effective, it is important to find out possible deficiencies in teachers’ knowledge as well as teachers’ own perceptions about their needs. By focusing on pre-service teachers’ knowledge of fraction division in this article, we conceptualize the notion of pre-service teachers’ knowledge in mathematics and pedagogy for teaching as containing both teachers’ perceptions of their preparation and their mathematics knowledge needed for teaching. With specific assessment instruments developed for pre-service middle school teachers, we focus on both pre-service teachers’ own perceptions about their knowledge preparation and the extent of their mathematics knowledge on the topic of fraction division. The results reveal a wide gap between sampled pre-service middle school teachers’ general perceptions/confidence and their limited mathematics knowledge needed for teaching fraction division conceptually. The results suggest that these pre-service teachers need to develop a sound and deep understanding of mathematics knowledge for teaching in order to build their confidence for classroom instruction. The study’s findings indicate the feasibility and importance of conceptualizing the notion of teachers’ knowledge in mathematics and pedagogy for teaching to include teachers’ perceptions. The applicability and implications of this expanded notion of teachers’ knowledge is then discussed.

Issue 4 of Mathematical Thinking and Learning has been published with the following main articles:

• Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussions: Five Practices for Helping Teachers Move Beyond Show and Tell, by Mary Kay Stein,  Randi A. Engle,  Margaret S. Smith and Elizabeth K. Hughes
• Picture Books as an Impetus for Kindergartners’ Mathematical Thinking, Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Sylvia van den Boogaard
• Mathematics Teaching and Learning as a Mediating Process: The Case of Tape Diagrams, by Aki Murata

The October issue of International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education has been published. It has the following articles (links to the article abstracts):

• Do You Want Me to Do It with Probability or with My Normal Thinking? Horizontal and Vertical Views on the Formation of Stochastic Conceptions, by Susanne Prediger, Germany
• Teachers’ Perceptions of Mathematics Content Knowledge Assessments in Professional Development Courses, by Michelle T. Chamberlin, Robert A. Powers and Jodie D. Novak, USA 
• Mathematics Anxiety Among 4th And 5th Grade Turkish Elementary School Students, by Fulya Yüksel-Şahin, Türkiye 
• A Comparison of Placement in First-Year University Mathematics Courses Using Paper and Online Administration of a Placement Test, by Phyllis A. Schumacher and Richard M. Smith, USA 
• Senior Student Teachers’ Understanding of Relations Between Function, Equation, and Polynomial Concepts as Conceptual Knowledge, Danyal Soybas, Yılmaz Aksoy and Hayri Akay, Türkiye

Elsa Malisani and Filippo Spagnolo have written an article called From arithmetical thought to algebraic thought: The role of the “variable”. This article was published online in Educational Studies in Mathematics last week. Here is the article abstract:

The introduction of the concept of the variable represents a critical point in the arithmetic–algebraic transition. This concept is complex because it is used with different meanings in different situations. Its management depends on the particular way of using it in problem-solving. The aim of this paper was to analyse whether the notion of “unknown” interferes with the interpretation of the variable “in functional relation” and the kinds of languages used by the students in problem-solving. We also wanted to study the concept of the variable in the process of translation from algebraic language into natural language. We present two experimental studies. In the first one, we administered a questionnaire to 111 students aged 16–19 years. Drawing on the conclusions of this research we carried out the second study with two pairs of students aged 16–17 years.