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### Defining Mathematics Education

The Seventy-fifth Yearbook is a celebration and reflection of the history of the NCTM yearbooks, and is a great resource on the key issues of mathematics education through the years.

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# Fractions

A collection of papers originally written to stimulate discussion in the AAMT Virtual Conference 2004.

This topic was chosen for the Virtual Cnference because it is one that challenges teachers at all levels of schooling. There wouldn’t be an issue if the students have been carefully introduced to the idea of fractions, become familiar with different representations (decimals, ratios etc.) that are important components of proportional thinking, moved to operating with numerical fractions and then used this knowledge and skills fluently when working with algebraic fractions. Not much to ask!

Several papers were written focussing on teaching and learning at different levels of schooling:

## When a half is not a half

A short paper about the early introduction of fraction ideas by Denise Neal (Tasmania).

vc-neal.pdf 70.72 kB

## Bags of flour

A task for middle/upper primary students that you can try in your own classroom. The task has been extensively researched by the team working on the FIrst Steps Mathematics Project in Western Australia and you can compare your students' work with their analyses of common errors and misconceptions (thanks to Kaye Treacy and colleagues in WA).

vc-treacy.pdf 190.83 kB

## Partitioning - the missing link

A four part paper by Di Siemon (Victoria) that looks at the idea of partitioning as the missing link in many of our students' development during the middle years.

vc-siemon.pdf 380.90 kB

## A double whammy: Algebra with fractions!

A discussion starter in the world of secondary schools where the fractions meet algebra (and other symbols) by Elizabeth Burns (Victoria).

vc-burns.pdf 87.88 kB