In response to concerns about teacher retention, especially among teachers in their first to fourth year in the classroom, we offer future teachers a series of brief guides full of practical advice that they can refer to in both their student teaching and in their first years on the job. Number Theory for Elementary School Teachers is designed for preservice candidates in early and/or elementary education. The text complements traditional Math Methods courses and provides deep content knowledge for prospective and first year teachers.
This book offers multiple interconnected perspectives on the largely untapped potential of elementary number theory for mathematics education: its formal and cognitive nature, its relation to arithmetic and algebra, its accessibility, its utility and intrinsic merits, to name just a few. Its purpose is to promote explication and critical dialogue about these issues within the international mathematics education community. The studies comprise a variety of pedagogical and research orientations by an international group of researchers that, collectively, make a compelling case for the relevance and importance of number theory in mathematics education in both pre K-16 settings and mathematics teacher education. Topics variously engaged include: *understanding particular concepts related to numerical structure and number theory; *elaborating on the historical and psychological relevance of number theory in concept development; *attaining a smooth transition and extension from pattern recognition to formative principles; *appreciating the aesthetics of number structure; *exploring its suitability in terms of making connections leading to aha! insights and reaching toward the learner's affective domain; *reexamining previously constructed knowledge from a novel angle; *investigating connections between technique and theory; *utilizing computers and calculators as pedagogical tools; and *generally illuminating the role number theory concepts could play in developing mathematical knowledge and reasoning in students and teachers. Overall, the chapters of this book highlight number theory-related topics as a stepping-stone from arithmetic toward generalization and algebraic formalism, and as a means for providing intuitively grounded meanings of numbers, variables, functions, and proofs. Number Theory in Mathematics Education: Perspectives and Prospects is of interest to researchers, teacher educators, and students in the field of mathematics education, and is well suited as a text for upper-level mathematics education courses.
'The exposition is exceptionally clear, and keeps its audience in mind: in the end, this is ‘a book for adults on mathematics for children’. ‘Adults’ here includes parents as well as teachers; in the author’s words, ‘Every parent is automatically an educator!’ There is considerable merit in including parents in the elementary mathematics conversation; it is a pleasure to see books like Kupferman’s that explain elementary math to adults. If our students, in their future role as teachers, can enlist parents as allies, everyone will benefit. These books are one good way to begin addressing that challenge.'MAA ReviewsThis book covers the elementary school mathematics curriculum common in most parts of the world. Its aim is to serve educators (teachers and parents) as a guide for teaching mathematics at elementary school level. The book focuses both on content knowledge and on pedagogical content knowledge. It bridges the gap between fundamental mathematical principles and good teaching practices. It also offers the reader a glimpse on how mathematicians perceive elementary mathematics and presents ideas for specific mathematical activities.Volume 2 focuses on content taught in the higher grades of elementary school. It covers the following topics: multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers, divisibility and primality, divisibility signs, sequences, fractions and their representations, and fraction arithmetic.The author is also a co-founder of Matific, an adaptive game-based teaching and learning tool for primary school mathematics. Independent studies have shown Matific to improve test scores, reduce maths anxiety, and increase motivation. Matific is available in 26 languages and aligned to mathematics curricula in 46 countries. Awards include Best Mathematics Instructional Solution, Best Game-Based Curriculum Solution and Best Educational App. For a trial, visit https://www.matific.com.
Designed for precollege teachers by a collaborative of teachers, educators, and mathematicians, Famous Functions in Number Theory is based on a course offered in the Summer School Teacher Program at the Park City Mathematics Institute. But this book isn't a "course" in the traditional sense. It consists of a carefully sequenced collection of problem sets designed to develop several interconnected mathematical themes, and one of the goals of the problem sets is for readers to uncover these themes for themselves. Famous Functions in Number Theory introduces readers to the use of formal algebra in number theory. Through numerical experiments, participants learn how to use polynomial algebra as a bookkeeping mechanism that allows them to count divisors, build multiplicative functions, and compile multiplicative functions in a certain way that produces new ones. One capstone of the investigations is a beautiful result attributed to Fermat that determines the number of ways a positive integer can be written as a sum of two perfect squares. Famous Functions in Number Theory is a volume of the book series "IAS/PCMI-The Teacher Program Series" published by the American Mathematical Society. Each volume in that series covers the content of one Summer School Teacher Program year and is independent of the rest. Titles in this series are co-published with the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute. Members of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) receive a 20% discount from list price.
This second edition updates the well-regarded 2001 publication with new short sections on topics like Catalan numbers and their relationship to Pascal's triangle and Mersenne numbers, Pollard rho factorization method, Hoggatt-Hensell identity. Koshy has added a new chapter on continued fractions. The unique features of the first edition like news of recent discoveries, biographical sketches of mathematicians, and applications--like the use of congruence in scheduling of a round-robin tournament--are being refreshed with current information. More challenging exercises are included both in the textbook and in the instructor's manual. Elementary Number Theory with Applications 2e is ideally suited for undergraduate students and is especially appropriate for prospective and in-service math teachers at the high school and middle school levels. * Loaded with pedagogical features including fully worked examples, graded exercises, chapter summaries, and computer exercises * Covers crucial applications of theory like computer security, ISBNs, ZIP codes, and UPC bar codes * Biographical sketches lay out the history of mathematics, emphasizing its roots in India and the Middle East
Studies of teachers in the U.S. often document insufficient subject matter knowledge in mathematics. Yet, these studies give few examples of the knowledge teachers need to support teaching, particularly the kind of teaching demanded by recent reforms in mathematics education. Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics describes the nature and development of the knowledge that elementary teachers need to become accomplished mathematics teachers, and suggests why such knowledge seems more common in China than in the United States, despite the fact that Chinese teachers have less formal education than their U.S. counterparts. The anniversary edition of this bestselling volume includes the original studies that compare U.S and Chinese elementary school teachers’ mathematical understanding and offers a powerful framework for grasping the mathematical content necessary to understand and develop the thinking of school children. Highlighting notable changes in the field and the author’s work, this new edition includes an updated preface, introduction, and key journal articles that frame and contextualize this seminal work.
Through a careful treatment of number theory and geometry, Number, Shape, & Symmetry: An Introduction to Number Theory, Geometry, and Group Theory helps readers understand serious mathematical ideas and proofs. Classroom-tested, the book draws on the authors’ successful work with undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, seventh to tenth grade mathematically talented students in the University of Chicago’s Young Scholars Program, and elementary public school teachers in the Seminars for Endorsement in Science and Mathematics Education (SESAME). The first half of the book focuses on number theory, beginning with the rules of arithmetic (axioms for the integers). The authors then present all the basic ideas and applications of divisibility, primes, and modular arithmetic. They also introduce the abstract notion of a group and include numerous examples. The final topics on number theory consist of rational numbers, real numbers, and ideas about infinity. Moving on to geometry, the text covers polygons and polyhedra, including the construction of regular polygons and regular polyhedra. It studies tessellation by looking at patterns in the plane, especially those made by regular polygons or sets of regular polygons. The text also determines the symmetry groups of these figures and patterns, demonstrating how groups arise in both geometry and number theory. The book is suitable for pre-service or in-service training for elementary school teachers, general education mathematics or math for liberal arts undergraduate-level courses, and enrichment activities for high school students or math clubs.
