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Last week, an interesting article was published online in the International Journal of Early Childhood . The article is entitled Exploring Kindergarten Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Mathematics , and it has been written by Joohl Lee. The combination of teachers knowledge of mathematics and kindergarten is very interesting, and while a lot of research has been done to learn more about the type of knowledge mathematics  teachers need in school, little has been done to learn more about this in kindergarten. This is also mentioned by Lee in the article. As the title of the article reveals, Lee builds upon Shulman's traditional framework of teachers' professional knowledge. What I don't understand, however, is how it is possible to write an article about teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics without making any reference to the MKT (Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching) framework, or any of the work done by Deborah Ball and her colleagues at the U...

John M. Francisco and Carolyn A. Maher have written an article about Teachers attending to students’ mathematical reasoning: lessons from an after-school research program . This article was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education last Thursday. This article is interesting in several respects, amongst others because awareness of and knowledge about students' mathematical reasoning is something teachers need, and it should be part of every mathematics teacher's professional knowledge. Theoretically, it builds upon Shulman's classic framework, but they also make interesting links to a focus on practitioner-researcher collaboration. The article reports on a study that was made of "elementary and middle school teachers who participated as interns in the 1-year NSF-funded Informal Mathematical Learning Project (IML)". Here is a copy of the abstract of their article: There is a documented need for more opportunities for teachers to learn about stude...

The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy - for many reasons - and I haven't been able to follow up on all the latest articles and news in the field. I apologize for this, and I hope that all the readers of the blog have patience with me! I promise that I will catch up :-) In the meantime, you always have a couple of good options in order to stay really up-to-date: Pay attention to my Google Reader blog (shared items) Follow me on twitter These two sites are a bit easier for me to update, and when I don't manage to update my blog as often as I would, I will probably continue to push new updates to these two other services. Still, as soon as I get my head above water again, I will keep providing you with information here as well :-)

Esther Levenson, Pessia Tsamir and Dina Tirosh have written an interesting article about Mathematically based and practically based explanations in the elementary school: teachers’ preferences . Their article was published online in Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education on Friday. In this article, the authors make interesting connnections between research on teachers' knowledge and beliefs. Although their focus is on knowledge and beliefs in relation to the use of explanations (and they distinguish between mathematically and practically based explanations) in the classroom, the article makes a nice contribution to extending our understanding of the way these concepts are related. The part of teachers' knowledge (and beliefs) that the authors discuss is related to students' thinking, or even a sub-category of that. In this respect, they make valuable contributions to what Deborah Ball and her colleagues refer to as Knowledge of Content and Students, but their focus is al...

A new issue of ZDM - The International Journal on Mathematics Education has been published. This issue has a special focus on Historical aspects of the use of technology and devices in ICMEs and ICMI , and guest editors have been Maria G. Bartolini Bussi and Marcelo C. Borba. The issue contains 15 articles which covers many aspects of the theme, from historical perspectives on the use of technology to a social perspective on technology enhanced learning. Here is an overview of the contents of this issue: The role of resources and technology in mathematics education , by Maria G. Bartolini Bussi and Marcelo C. Borba Historical comments on the use of technology and devices in ICMEs and ICMI , by Gert Schubring Exploration of technologies, emerging from African cultural practices, in mathematics (teacher) education , by Paulus Gerdes Concrete models and dynamic instruments as early technology tools in classrooms at the dawn of ICMI: from Felix Klein to present applications in mathematics...