As students enter kindergarten, some students are more academically prepared than others. This study looked at the relationships among preschool attendance, preschool type (i.e., public, private, Head Start, and home-based technology providers) and preschool quality and early mathematical literacy skills for diverse students. The study sought to answer three research questions: What is the relationship between preschool attendance and early mathematical literacy? What is the relationship between preschool type and early mathematical literacy? What is the relationship between preschool quality and early mathematical literacy? Within each research question, there was also an investigation to see if there were differing effects for diverse student demographics. Data was obtained from the USBE in relation to preschool enrollment records and kindergarten entry scores on the state mandated Kindergarten Entry and Exit Profile (KEEP) assessment for all kindergarten students enrolled in the 2017-18 school year. The researcher conducted a 2x2 Factor ANOVA, independent group means t-tests, and multiple regression analysis to determine relationships among preschool attendance, type, and quality and early mathematical literacy. In general, the independent variables of attending preschool and the quality of the preschool did not seem to have the positive influence expected on early mathematical literacy as a whole, but when looking more specifically at the demographic covariates, there were some positive influences. Students who participated in online preschool programming on average experienced the highest early mathematical literacy scores. Overall, the results suggested that students from diverse backgrounds experience improved early mathematical literacy when they attended preschool. Therefore, with the limited funding available for preschool, policymakers should consider which students might most benefit from preschool experience and target limited resources to such populations.

Magister Educationis - MEd / The study was located within the project : Relevance of school mathematics Education (ROSME) of the Department of Dicactics at the University of the Western Cape. The research was undertaken in the belief that mathematics enables creative and logical reasoning about contextualised problems in the realm of the physical and social world as well as in the discipline mathematics itself. This research attempted to investigate the contextual issues that teachers have to deal with in mathematics education. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Local and international pundits concur that education systems play a pivotal role in fostering and developing values in learners. In some countries, like South Africa, the values and rights enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights resonate in the Schools Act. As one of the concerns of education is nation building, my study investigates if the integration of the values does achieve tolerance and co-operation in the classroom by examining how learners make sense of values in the Mathematical Literacy curriculum. While I firmly believe that educational institutions have a responsibility to integrate positive values into all aspects of the school curriculum, it is my contention that learners cannot fully benefit from values specifically related to the Mathematical Literacy curriculum itself on their own. All stakeholders in education need to come together to establish an informed understanding of policy documents and reconcile the complexities and challenges that surround the transmission of values, so that educators will be able to assist learners in a meaningful way. The classroom life of a learner is intricately woven with that of the teacher. In order to unearth the views and practices of learners and teachers, I adopted a participatory approach. The qualitative study that ensued was conducted in three Mathematics Literacy classrooms at secondary schools in Cape Town, South Africa. The observation sessions afforded me the opportunity to experience and appreciate how the teachers integrate values into the Mathematical Literacy lessons while observing learners‟ behaviour in the classroom. The interactions and interviews with both learners and teachers aided in further unravelling their understanding and implementation of values in the Mathematical Literacy lessons. For learners to develop into responsible, caring and morally just citizens who are capable of critical thought, they require an education that provides them with the necessary opportunities and tools to develop. Mathematical Literacy is able to provide learners with the relevant opportunities and thinking tools to construct meaning around moral concepts. I strongly believe that for learners to accomplish this goal, educators need to be appropriately capacitated to facilitate opportunities for their learners. I did not find any evidence in the literature that suggests a fail-safe theoretical approach to success in values education. I am of the opinion that for any measure of success in values education, a combination of these theories of learning and moral development has to be employed.

<p>Studiens syfte är dels att undersöka vilken förståelse för matematik ur ett samhällsperspektiv som elever på en mellansvensk kommunal gymnasieskola har, utifrån den beskrivning av ämnet som finns i de svenska styrdokumenten. Syftet är också att undersöka vilken inställning till ämnet eleverna har, hur attityden påverkas av vänner och familj, samt vilken betydelse media har i synen på matematik.</p><p>Studien bygger på en enkätundersökning där 130 respondenters svar har behandlats. Genomgående i analysen har gruppen med elever som läser ett yrkesinriktat program jämförts med de elever som studerar på ett mer teoretiskt inriktat program.</p><p>Resulatet visar att elevernas förståelse för matematikens roll i samhället är fullt acceptabel, men att det är få som nått ett fördjuad insikt. En klar majoritet anser att de förstår syftet med matematikundervisningen.</p><p>Trots att en dryg trejedel tycker att matematik är det viktigaste ämnet så finner cirka hälften inget intresse för ämnet. En sjundedel säger sig t.o.m. uppleva ångestkänslor i samband med matematik.</p><p>Både närmiljö (familj, vänner) och media påverkar i viss utsträckning attityden till ämnet.</p> / <p>The aim of the study is to examine the understanding of mathematics from a societal perspective among pupils at a Central Swedish municipal upper secondary school, based on the subject's description found in the Swedish regulatory policies. The study also aims at investigating the pupils' attitude towards the subject, how this attitude is affected by family and friends and what influence the media has in the construction of these views.</p><p>The study is based on a survey containing the answers of 130 pupils. Throughout the analysis the group containing students on vocationally-oriented programs have been compared to the student on the academic programmes.</p><p>The result of the study shows that the understanding of mathematics and its role in society is quite acceptable, but also that few pupils show a deeper comprehension. A substantial majority think that they understand the purpose of mathematics at upper secondary school.</p><p>Even though more than a third of the pupils regard mathematics as the most important subject half of the pupils find no interest at all in the subject. One out of seven pupils even considerers mathematics to provoke feelings of anxiety.</p><p>The study further shows that both the close environment (family and friends) and media to some extent affect the attitude towards mathematics.</p>

Studiens syfte är dels att undersöka vilken förståelse för matematik ur ett samhällsperspektiv som elever på en mellansvensk kommunal gymnasieskola har, utifrån den beskrivning av ämnet som finns i de svenska styrdokumenten. Syftet är också att undersöka vilken inställning till ämnet eleverna har, hur attityden påverkas av vänner och familj, samt vilken betydelse media har i synen på matematik. Studien bygger på en enkätundersökning där 130 respondenters svar har behandlats. Genomgående i analysen har gruppen med elever som läser ett yrkesinriktat program jämförts med de elever som studerar på ett mer teoretiskt inriktat program. Resulatet visar att elevernas förståelse för matematikens roll i samhället är fullt acceptabel, men att det är få som nått ett fördjuad insikt. En klar majoritet anser att de förstår syftet med matematikundervisningen. Trots att en dryg trejedel tycker att matematik är det viktigaste ämnet så finner cirka hälften inget intresse för ämnet. En sjundedel säger sig t.o.m. uppleva ångestkänslor i samband med matematik. Både närmiljö (familj, vänner) och media påverkar i viss utsträckning attityden till ämnet. / The aim of the study is to examine the understanding of mathematics from a societal perspective among pupils at a Central Swedish municipal upper secondary school, based on the subject's description found in the Swedish regulatory policies. The study also aims at investigating the pupils' attitude towards the subject, how this attitude is affected by family and friends and what influence the media has in the construction of these views. The study is based on a survey containing the answers of 130 pupils. Throughout the analysis the group containing students on vocationally-oriented programs have been compared to the student on the academic programmes. The result of the study shows that the understanding of mathematics and its role in society is quite acceptable, but also that few pupils show a deeper comprehension. A substantial majority think that they understand the purpose of mathematics at upper secondary school. Even though more than a third of the pupils regard mathematics as the most important subject half of the pupils find no interest at all in the subject. One out of seven pupils even considerers mathematics to provoke feelings of anxiety. The study further shows that both the close environment (family and friends) and media to some extent affect the attitude towards mathematics.

M.Ed. / Infusing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into the teaching and learning of Mathematical Literacy Located in the qualitative research paradigm, this study was conducted in eight Gauteng Department of Education schools in the Ekurhuleni North District 6, in Gauteng South Africa and aimed to investigate the use of ICTs in the teaching and learning of Mathematical Literacy. This study focused on how Mathematical Literacy teachers use ICTs to enhance their teaching and learning. In addition, teachers’ attitude, ICT competency as well as the challenges that they face in using ICTs to enhance the teaching and learning of Mathematical Literacy was investigated. Not only is knowledge of ICTs important but the competence of ICT users, namely teachers and learners requirements need to be illuminated through extensive and intensive research. For this reason, this study could, despite its limitations, pave the way for far more elaborate studies to be conducted. This study will contribute towards an understanding of teachers’ experiences of the use of ICTs in South African classrooms. The need exists for teachers to be trained in computer literacy skills and technology skills as well as for school management and the Department of Education (DoE) to provide the necessary support that is deemed essential for the successful use of ICTs in the teaching and learning of Mathematical Literacy. The findings of this study suggests that unless school management and the DoE providethe necessary training and support for teachers, the likelihood of attaining the goal of all learners being ICT literate by 2013, may not be realised.

Magister Educationis - MEd / The study is located within the project: Relevance of School Mathematics Education (ROSME) of the Department of Didactics at the University of the Western Cape. The research is undertaken in the belief that Mathematics enables creative and logical reasoning about contextualised problems in the realm of the physical and social world as well as in the discipline mathematics itself. Relevance of school Mathematics has the implied notion of contextual issues. This research attempts to investigate the contextual issues that teachers have to deal with in Mathematics education. Given the results of the TIMMS report, this research aims to investigate, through comparison, the context preferences between a selected group of practicing teachers in South Africa and those of their counterparts in South Korea.

This study addresses the question of whether or not pre-service teachers are ready and prepared to use and teach the highly-specialized language of each discipline. The disciplinary languages present teaching and learning challenges due to their lack of parallels in the daily language (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Additionally, the languages of the disciplines are rarely taught and are commonly acquired through an isolated representation of words without a situated meaning within the theory (Gee, 2002). The knowledge of the particular ways of reading, writing, listening to, and talking in the content areas provides opportunities for students’ apprenticeship within the disciplines required for success in higher education contexts (Dobbs, Ippolito, and Charner, 2017). Moreover, this study addresses the question of how future teachers develop disciplinary knowledge and skills. The purpose of this case study was to investigate how mathematical literacy is shaped and defined by the experiences, language, and disciplinary practices of pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics. This overall aim was unfolded by three guiding research questions: 1) What do the Experiences of Pre-Service Teachers and Experts in Mathematics Reveal about their Understanding of Mathematical Literacy? 2) RQ 2. How do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics use language when solving mathematical problems? and 3) What literacy practices do pre-service teachers and experts in mathematics utilize when presented with modules that require mathematics problem-solving? To structure the elements of analysis for the participants’ responses, I adopted the theoretical support from the emerging disciplinary literacy framework, the novice-expert paradigm, and the tenets of M. K. Halliday’s functional linguistic theory (i.e., Systemic Functional Linguistics; [SFL]). Four faculty in the Department of Mathematics and four pre-service teachers in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at a large Midwest university agreed to participate in this case study. For the data collection, I asked the participants to participate in two sessions. In the first sessions, the participants responded to a semi-structured interview. Afterward, in a second session, the participants solved modules of mathematical problems following three protocols: a think-aloud, a silent-solving, and an oral-explanatory. The results of the participants’ responses to the semi-structured interview and the three protocols indicated that their experiences as learners and teachers of mathematics are tied to their definitions of literacy and disciplinary literacy. The SFL analysis showed that for the experts of mathematics, mathematical problem-solving is a more abstract and cognitive practice. The pre-service teachers’ registers indicated that mathematical problem-solving is experienced as more concrete and real practice. The unique literacy practices that these participants displayed showed the strong connection between language, literacy, and mathematical thought.The implications of this study are discussed in terms of the importance of language and disciplinary literacy in preparation for future teachers as they progress in their course of study within their teaching education programs.

Bakalauro darbe analizuojami VIII klasių nedidelių specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčių mokinių, besimokančių bendrojo lavinimo mokykloje, matematikos gebėjimai bei raštingumas. Suformuluota hipotezė, jog tikėtina, kad nedidelių specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčių mokinių, besimokančių bendrojo lavinimo mokykloje, matematiniai gebėjimai atitinka Nacionalinio mokinių pasiekimų tyrimo testų vertinimo instrukcijoje aprašytą patenkinamą pasiekimų lygmenį. Tyrime dalyvavo 40 VIII klasių nedidelių specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turintys mokiniai, besimokantys bendrojo lavinimo mokyklose. Kontrolinio matematikos testo metodu tirta, kaip nedidelių specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turintys mokiniai geba pritaikyti turimas matematikos žinias, spręsdami uždavinius ir kokie yra jų gebėjimai. Tyrimu nustatyta, kad VIII klasės nedidelių specialiųjų ugdymosi poreikių turinčių mokinių žinios ir gebėjimai atitinka matematikos programoje nurodytus minimalius reikalavimus, tačiau šios žinios nėra tvirtos, mokiniai ne visada gebėjo jas taikyti praktinėje veikloje sprendžiant uždavinius. Todėl beveik visose užduotyse buvo daroma klaidų. Išanalizavus tyrimo rezultatus pastebėta, kad geriausiai moksleiviams sekėsi atlikti geometrijos turinio srities uždavinius, spręsti aritmetines eilutes bei kitus lengvesnio pobūdžio veiksmus, kuriuose buvo pateikti atsakymo variantai. Kiek sunkiau mokiniams sekėsi atlikti tuos uždavinius, kuriuose reikėjo skaičius kelti laipsniu, rasti pradinę prekės kainą ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Mathematic and mathematical literacy are very important parts of personality and of all society. There are things which make an influence on human daily life, work and others. These things are important in education too because schoolchildren have to know that these subjects are necessary not only now but it will be need in the future too. The bachelor work deals with schoolchildren of 8th classes and who have small special educational needs. The purpose of investigation was to explore mathematical abilities of children with small special educational needs. It is hypothesized, that probably children’s with small special educational needs who learn in comprehensive school mathematical abilities adequate achievement level of satisfactory which was written in National schoolchildren achievement, in instruction of investigation’s evaluation tests. Forty schoolchildren with small educational needs of 8th classes participated in this investigation. The respondents were selected from Šiauliai, Skuodas, Kupiškis comprehensive schools. They had to work a sums which were taken from National schoolchildren achievements investigation in 2007. The results of investigation showed that schoolchildren with small special educational needs don’t have enough information of mathematic, so their mathematical abilities are not good too. Some results of worksheet were comparable with normal schoolchildren of the same age. Results of these people were better because they were done less mistakes... [to full text]

Literacia matemática é a capacidade de identificar, compreender e utilizar noções quantitativas e matemáticas na vida prática. A falta dessa habilidade entre jornalistas é responsável por erros em reportagens e também pela limitação do trabalho de apuração. Esta pesquisa investiga a ocorrência e as formas como informações quantitativas são inseridas em notícias, e discute seu papel na a formação de estudantes de jornalismo, enfatizando a necessidade de pensar números em contexto e de compreender os conhecimentos matemáticos como uma ferramenta indispensável para o exercício da cidadania. Ao campo da pesquisa em Educação Matemática, o trabalho traz uma perspectiva voltada ao ensino de matemática em nível superior para carreiras não-afins. / Mathematical literacy is the ability to identify, understand and apply quantitative and mathematical knowledge in the everyday life. When lacking this ability, journalists not only make mistakes in reporting, but also become limited in their investigations. The present study researches how often and in which ways quantitative information is used in the news, and argues about its place in the journalism school, emphasizing the importance of thinking about numbers in their context and of understanding mathematical knowledge as an imperative tool for citizenship. To the Mathematics Education research field, this work provides a perspective on teaching Mathematics in higher education for careers outside of STEM.