List of Content

March 2009

Editorial

Reflection From Practice

Initial Appraisal of the Professional Development of Teacher- Researchers
Bronislaw Czarnocha

Teaching Practice

Developing Number Sense with Technology-Based Science Experiments: Reflections of Classroom Practice in Primary Grades and Pre-service Education
Irina Lyublinskaya

Story of Number : A Modular Approach Number and Number Line
Vrunda Prabhu

Teaching Statistics Through Student Engagement in a Study on Alternative Medication Practices
Nkechi Agwu, Piotr Bialas, Brahmadeo Dewprashad, Barbara Tacinelli

Teaching Research

Research on Teaching Mathematics: A Practitioner Perspective
Chun Ip Fung

Teaching-Research Investigations

Student Perceptions of Teaching Styles in Mathematics Learning Environments
Gerunda Hughes

Download FULL Version

Editorial

We present the Editors‘ issue whose aim is to demonstrate the type, the standard and the variety of submissions we would like to receive in Mathematics Teaching-Research Journal on line. Each of our editors was invited to submit the paper written „the way they would like to see submissions prepared.“ Together with the Editors issue we are bringing several new changes whose purpose is to streamline the reception and the review of the manuscripts. Please check (click Submissions above) the division of the MTRJ on line into described sections whose names were derived on the basis of the submissions to the previous six issues. The sections are: Mathematics Education, Reflections on Practice, Teaching Practice, Teaching-Research and Teaching-Research Investigations. Notice also the rubric with the help of which the Editors will asses the manuscripts. Note that we address ourselves both to school’s practitioners or teachers as well as to academic scholars hoping to create the platform of mutual understanding and support. The new Welcome Mission statement addresses itself deeper into those issues.

In the section Reflection of Practice we have the submission from Broni Czarnocha, a physicist and mathematics educator from Hostos CC who informs about the completion of the international Professional Development of Teacher-Researchers supported by the grant of the Socrates Program of the European Community. He discusses international comparison of different approaches taken by different teams of the project to one chosen question from the international exam PISA.

In the section Teaching Practice we have three papers, two of them addressing the same issue of the development of number sense amongst our students. One of them is written by a physicist turned mathematics educator, Irina Lyublinskaya from CSI, who takes a technological angle for the preparation of activities to develop the number sense, and the second one is written by Vrunda Prabhu, a mathematician/topologist from Bronx CC who takes the geometrical approach to tackle the same problem. The third paper in this section is by Nkechi Agwu, mathematics instructor from BMCC and her colleagues, who had created the course with direct relevance for the communities where the students live. Her paper has a mark, of what has been called the Teaching-Action-Research, a new methodology created for the purposes of education in India, which combines classroom Teaching-Research with the Action Research in the surrounding community.

The section Teaching Research has a thought provoking submission from Chun Ip, mathematics educator from the Hong Kong Institute of Education who is informing about the teaching-research project Teaching for Mathematizing (TFM), which produces and studies the instructional designs. Chun Ip’s submission starts a very important discussion, What are the Standards the Teaching-Research profession should adopt as its guiding principles?

In the section Teaching-Research Investigations we present the investigation of students perception of teaching styles conducted by Gerunda B. Hughes from Howard University. It compares the student perceptions of the interactive element of teaching in experimental classes taught with a strong emphasis on teacher/student interaction with the perception of students in the control class taught primarily by didactic lecturing.