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The current moves by many African countries including Kenya to reform their mathematics education to adopt learner-centred pedagogies presents a need to fill the knowledge gap on learner-textbook relationships there. The mathematics textbook remains a key resource for teaching and learning and is increasingly being expected to play a pedagogical role in addition to making the national curriculums manifest to both teachers and students. In Kenya, the textbooks published by the state-owned company are regarded as core and occupy a central role in mathematics teaching. We present findings on the perceptions of students at three Kenyan public secondary schools on what they value in textbooks and what they find lacking in their core text in their efforts towards engagement with mathematics through self-regulated learning. Implications for practice are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the instruction and organisation of the measurement domain by comparing textbooks from China, Japan, and Malaysia. Focusing on length measurement, we adopted the use of praxeology from the Anthropological Theory of the Didactics as a framework to reveal the knowledge to be taught in the transposition process, and developmental progression of levels of thinking from Learning Trajectories as a framework to reveal the mental processes or actions generated to achieve the learning goals from the domain. The findings are assembled in three dimensions: types of tasks, accumulation of practice blocks per thinking levels, and instruction sequences. The results indicate that all three countries promote, in different degrees according to their education goals, the development of measurement knowledge by: understanding how to use measurement tools, coordinating the relationship between standard units, and estimating measurements. Lastly, the theoretical framework is proposed as a tool to justify instructional decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on students' meaning-making when working with mathematics textbooks from a multimodal approach that encompasses all resources for communication, which is an under researched area. Central to this study are the designed meanings of the textbooks and the affordances discovered by students when working with the textbooks. Video transcripts from 18 Year 1 (ages 7–8) students working with seven textbook pages were analysed. The results show that the designs of exercises are complex, that the students use different approaches when working with the textbook – from one exercise to another as well as within the same exercise – and that they sometimes discover content other than what the textbook was designed to offer. Conclusions drawn from this are that textbooks can be improved as learning tools – multimodal aspects of this are highlighted – and that more awareness of multimodality in mathematics teaching could support students' mathematical learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the use of axiomatic definitions for mathematical concepts, scholars struggle to produce a single definition of angle that does not have some limitations. Textbooks' treatment of angle and its measure reflects this multifaceted nature of the angle concept while informing the different ways learners conceive of these concepts. In this study, I investigated the concept definitions provoked by textbook representations (e.g. diagrams) of radian angle measure. Seven prospective mathematics teachers (PMTs) participated in a think-aloud semi-structured interview and defined radian angle measure through examining six diagrams. A thematic analysis of concept definitions indicated that interacting with different representations provoked various concept definitions. Some provoked concept definitions focused on defining one radian. Other definitions indicated different quantitative operations (e.g. iteration, partitioning, proportionality). To provide learners opportunities to conceptualise radian angle measure quantitatively, teachers and curriculum developers are encouraged to incorporate multiple representations of radian angle measure into instructional materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we present an instrumental approach in mathematics education, which focuses on the interactions between students, teachers, and artefacts. This approach analyses mediations attached to the use of a given artefact and instruments developed by the subjects from this artefact along instrumental geneses. We draw on three Research Cases at university to illustrate the use of this approach: the first is about students' geneses with a programming technology; the second about students' and teachers' geneses with a virtual learning environment; and the third about textbooks and teachers professional development. We also introduce the documentational approach, which draws on the instrumental approach, but takes into account the broader range of available resources. It distinguishes resources and documents developed by teachers from these resources, and studies teachers' documentation systems. We present a fourth Research Case concerning the documentation system of a mathematics teacher, and focusing on the place of technologies within this system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the introduction of irrational and real numbers in secondary textbooks, and specifically the propositions on how these should be taught, in a sample of Brazilian textbooks used in state schools and approved by the Ministry of Education. The analyses discussed in this paper follow an institutional perspective (using Chevallard's Anthropological Theory of Didactics). Our results indicate that the notion of irrational number is generally introduced on the basis of the decimal representation of numbers, and that the mathematical need for the construction of the field of real numbers remains unclear in the textbooks. It seems that textbooks used in secondary teaching institutions develop mathematical organisations which focus on the practical block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides analysis of Palestinian mathematics textbooks. Topics discussed include the use of a specialised mathematical discourse, comparisons between Palestinian and English mathematics textbooks, and the use of linguistic indicators, mathematical vocabulary, and mathematical symbols in the textbooks.