Explains and demonstrates the role of examples in the teaching and learning of mathematics, and their place in mathematics generally at all levels. Includes a combination of exercises for the reader, practical applications for teaching, and solid scholarly grounding.

This book explains and demonstrates the teaching strategy of asking learners to construct their own examples of mathematical objects. The authors show that the creation of examples can involve transforming and reorganizing knowledge and that, although this is usually done by authors and teachers, if the responsibility for making examples is transferred to learners, their knowledge structures can be developed and extended. A multitude of examples to illustrate this is provided, spanning primary, secondary, and college levels. Readers are invited to learn from their own past experience augmented by tasks provided in the book, and are given direct experience of constructing examples through a collection of many tasks at many levels. Classroom stories show the practicalities of introducing such shifts in mathematics education. The authors examine how their approach relates to improving the learning of mathematics and raise future research questions. *Based on the authors' and others' theoretical and practical experience, the book includes a combination of exercises for the reader, practical applications for teaching, and solid scholarly grounding. *The ideas presented are generic in nature and thus applicable across every phase of mathematics teaching and learning. *Although the teaching methods offered are ones that engage learners imaginatively, these are also applied to traditional approaches to mathematics education; all tasks offered in the book are within conventional mathematics curriculum content. Mathematics as a Constructive Activity: Learners Generating Examples is intended for mathematics teacher educators, mathematics teachers, curriculum developers, task and test designers, and classroom researchers, and for use as a text in graduate-level mathematics education courses.

Engaging Young Children in Mathematics: Standards for Early Childhood Mathematics Education brings together the combined wisdom of a diverse group of experts involved with early childhood mathematics. The book originates from the landmark 2000 Conference on Standards for Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten Mathematics Education, attended by representatives from almost every state developing standards for young children's mathematics; federal government officials; mathematicians; mathematics educators; researchers from mathematics education, early childhood education, and psychology; curriculum developers; teachers; policymakers; and professionals from organizations such as the National Conference of Teachers of Mathematics and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The main goal of the Conference was to work collectively to help those responsible for framing and implementing early childhood mathematics standards. Although it has its roots in the Conference, the expanded scope of the standards and recommendations covered in this book includes the full range of kindergarten to grade 2. The volume is organized into two main parts and an online appendix (http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/conference/). Part One, Major Themes and Recommendations, offers a framework for thinking about pre-kindergarten - grade 2 mathematics education and specific recommendations. Part Two, Elaboration of Major Themes and Recommendations, provides substantive detail regarding young students' understandings of mathematical ideas. Each Part includes five parallel subsections: "Standards in Early Childhood Education"; "Math Standards and Guidelines"; "Curriculum, Learning, Teaching, and Assessment"; "Professional Development"; and "Toward the Future: Implementation and Policy." As a whole the book: * presents comprehensive summaries of research that provide specific guidelines for standards, curriculum, and teaching; * takes the recent reports and recommendations for early childhood mathematics education to the next level; * integrates practical details and research throughout; and * provides a succinct, but thorough review of research on the topics, sequences, and learning trajectories that children can and should learn at each of their first years of life, with specific developmental guidelines that suggest appropriate content for each topic for each year from 2-year-olds to 7-year-olds. This is an indispensable volume for mathematics educators, researchers, curriculum developers, teachers and policymakers, including those who create standards, scope and sequences, and curricula for young children and professional teacher development materials, and students in mathematics education, early childhood trainers, teacher educators, and faculty in mathematics education.

Extends the ideas of social constructivism to the philosophy of mathematics, developing a powerful critique of traditional absolutist conceptions of mathematics, and proposing a reconceptualization of the philosophy of mathematics.

First published in 1994. This book and its companion volume, Mathematics, Education and Philosophy: An International Perspective are edited collections. Instead of the sharply focused concerns of the research monograph, the books offer a panorama of complementary and forward-looking perspectives. They illustrate the breadth of theoretical and philosophical perspectives that can fruitfully be brough to bear on the mathematics and education. The empathise of this book is on epistemological issues, encompassing multiple perspectives on the learning of mathematics, as well as broader philosophical reflections on the genesis of knowledge. It explores constructivist and social theories of learning and discusses the rile of the computer in light of these theories.

The achievement of students of color continues to be disproportionately low at all levels of education. More than ever, Geneva Gay's foundational book on culturally responsive teaching is essential reading in addressing the needs of today's diverse student population. Combining insights from multicultural education theory and research with real-life classroom stories, Gay demonstrates that all students will perform better on multiple measures of achievement when teaching is filtered through their own cultural experiences. This bestselling text has been extensively revised to include expanded coverage of student ethnic groups: African and Latino Americans as well as Asian and Native Americans as well as new material on culturally diverse communication, addressing common myths about language diversity and the effects of "English Plus" instruction.

The chapters in this volume convey insights from mathematics education research that have direct implications for anyone interested in improving teaching and learning in undergraduate mathematics. This synthesis of research on learning and teaching mathematics provides relevant information for any math department or individual faculty member who is working to improve introductory proof courses, the longitudinal coherence of precalculus through differential equations, students' mathematical thinking and problem-solving abilities, and students' understanding of fundamental ideas such as variable and rate of change. Other chapters include information about programs that have been successful in supporting students' continued study of mathematics. The authors provide many examples and ideas to help the reader infuse the knowledge from mathematics education research into mathematics teaching practice. University mathematicians and community college faculty spend much of their time engaged in work to improve their teaching. Frequently, they are left to their own experiences and informal conversations with colleagues to develop new approaches to support student learning and their continuation in mathematics. Over the past 30 years, research in undergraduate mathematics education has produced knowledge about the development of mathematical understandings and models for supporting students' mathematical learning. Currently, very little of this knowledge is affecting teaching practice. We hope that this volume will open a meaningful dialogue between researchers and practitioners toward the goal of realizing improvements in undergraduate mathematics curriculum and instruction.