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Middle Grades Students' Algebraic Understanding in a Reform Curriculum
Author(s) -
Krebs Angela S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
school science and mathematics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.135
H-Index - 2
eISSN - 1949-8594
pISSN - 0036-6803
DOI - 10.1111/j.1949-8594.2003.tb18204.x
Subject(s) - curriculum , mathematics education , interactive mathematics program , connected mathematics , reform mathematics , curriculum mapping , algebra over a field , everyday mathematics , computer science , mathematics , curriculum development , pedagogy , psychology , pure mathematics
The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Curriculum and Evaluation Standards in 1989 was pivotal in mathematics reform. The National Science Foundation funded several curriculum projects to address the vision described in the Standards . This study investigates students' learning in one of these Standards ‐based curricula, the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP). The authors of CMP believe that the teaching and learning of algebra is an ongoing activity woven through the entire curriculum, rather than being parceled into a single grade level. The content of the study investigates students' ability to symbolically generalize functions. The data regards the solutions of four performance tasks dealing with three different types of relationships—linear, quadratic, and exponential situations—completed by five pairs of eighth‐grade students. The major finding claims that middle to high achieving students who had 3 years in the CMP curriculum demonstrated achievement in five strands of mathematical proficiency of a significant piece of algebra.