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Science and Mathematics Education Commons

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Selected Works

Ron Tzur

Mathematics Instruction

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Science and Mathematics Education

Curricular Change Agenda For Failure-Experienced Mathematics Students: Can Success-Promoting Assessment Make A Difference?, Ron Tzur, Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar Jan 2016

Curricular Change Agenda For Failure-Experienced Mathematics Students: Can Success-Promoting Assessment Make A Difference?, Ron Tzur, Nitsa Movshovitz-Hadar

Ron Tzur

The study reported in this paper addressed the question: Can a success promoting assessment schema (SPAS) be designed so as to have a positive impact on mathematics learning of failure-experienced students? Addressing the problem of the study is important because assessment of students' mathematics learning greatly impacts the way mathematics is taught and learned in schools (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1995). Learning mathematics is essential for one's functioning in today's society, and it is considered desirable that all students know and use mathematics (For Good Measure, 1992; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989). However, these goals are …


Riding The Mathematical Merry-Go-Round To Foster Conceptual Understanding Of Angle, Ron Tzur, Matthew Clark Jan 2016

Riding The Mathematical Merry-Go-Round To Foster Conceptual Understanding Of Angle, Ron Tzur, Matthew Clark

Ron Tzur

This article presents playful activities for fostering students' conceptual understanding of angle--a root concept in mathematics--that revolve around the Mathematical Merry-Go-Round game. The authors focus on activities for two reasons. On one hand, NCTM's Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (2000) stresses the central role of student activity in coming to understand mathematics. This emphasis is consistent with a constructivist stance (Piaget 1971) about learning as an active process. On the other hand, typical activities used for teaching angle, in which an introduction of the definition is followed by operations on angles, such as measuring, adding, comparing, and classifying, seem …


From Theory To Practice: Explaining Successful And Unsuccessful Teaching Activities (Case Of Fractions), Ron Tzur Jan 2016

From Theory To Practice: Explaining Successful And Unsuccessful Teaching Activities (Case Of Fractions), Ron Tzur

Ron Tzur

In a teaching experiment, I examined a theoretical model of mathematics teaching and learning in practice. In this paper I focus on how the model can guide the teacher's thinking about students' understandings and the generation of activities that foster intended transformations in those understandings. As a research-teacher I taught, twice a week for four months, basic ideas of fractions to 28 third graders, in a public school in Israel. The analysis of both classroom data and researcher's documented reflections indicates how the model can empower the generation and explanation of successful teaching activities, as well as thinking about and …