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There is work to do in raising both the awareness and credibility of libraries as partners in the research lifecycle. However research reveals that often library marketing activities are not strategic, integrated or well-grounded in market research. This case study explores a campaign entitled “10 Ways to Boost the Impact of Your Research”. What began as a resource was developed into an integrated series of promotional activities culminating in a 10-week email marketing campaign. This article briefly explores the literature, outlines the goals of the campaign, the processes involved in its implementation, and describes how it was evaluated.

We take "mathematical structure" to mean the identification of general properties which are instantiated in particular situations as relationships between elements or subsets of elements of a set. Because we take the view that appreciating structure is powerfully productive, attention to structure should be an essential part of mathematical teaching and learning. This is not to be confused with teaching children mathematical structure. We observe that children from quite early ages are able to appreciate structure to a greater extent than some authors have imagined. Initiating students to appreciate structure implies, of course, that their appreciation of it needs to be cultivated in order to deepen and to become more mature. We first consider some recent research that supports this view and then go on to argue that unless students are encouraged to attend to structure and to engage in structural thinking they will be blocked from thinking productively and deeply about mathematics. We provide several illustrative cases in which structural thinking helps to bridge the mythical chasm between conceptual and procedural approaches to teaching and learning mathematics. Finally we place our proposals in the context of how several writers in the past have attempted to explore the importance of structure in mathematics teaching and learning. (Contains 1 figure and 3 footnotes.)

It is a well-established norm in England that secondary school mathematics is taught in groups categorised by prior attainment. It is therefore worthwhile to report alternative practices of all-attainment teaching--but these are rare. In this article, we report aspects of all-attainment mathematics teaching in a secondary school that has maintained this practice as its norm over a considerable time, including in recent years, when a hierarchical approach to measuring mathematics learning has become the norm for accountability purposes. The teaching described here takes account of the needs and progress of different students within a common curriculum focus, and we identify key principles behind it. The article is intended to contribute to a record of all-attainment grouping practices in mathematics in England, so that these practices are not lost.

This article revisits methods and debates about teaching mathematics that were common in the 1980s and early 1990s, and then moves up to date with the findings from three mathematics departments that set out to make a difference for their lowest attaining students. The methods they used were distinctly focused on core mathematical ideas, and how all students could work with these. This Vygotskian approach supports students' development towards thinking in new-to-them mathematical ways, rather than accessing mathematical enquiry through particular social structures or non-mathematical modes of engagement. The author claims that any school which does not take seriously the mathematical understanding of the lowest achieving students is not truly comprehensive. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)

We draw on two studies of mathematics departments in 11-18 comprehensive maintained schools in England to compare and contrast the insights provided by differing theoretical perspectives. In one study, activity theory was used to describe common features of the work of three departments. In the other, a mathematics department was viewed and analysed as a complex system. In both cases, it was the learning of the departments as systems rather than of individuals that was of interest. The affordances and limitations of the analytical perspectives are discussed. Taken as a whole, this paper opens up the workings of school mathematics departments in a country which has a strong department culture.

At Montpelier High School (MHS) in Vermont, students are accustomed to making changes in their school and community. Over the last six years, MHS students have participated in the Annual Winooski River Cleanup Project, the construction of a solar-powered greenhouse that provides produce for the school's cafeteria, and a thriving composting program used to fertilize the produce and plants grown inside the greenhouse. This article describes the sustainable energy projects that students designed during the spring semester of 2008. An overview of the project is followed by a description of the planning and implementation processes, examples of specific student energy projects, and a discussion of outcomes and lessons learned. (Contains 2 figures and 1 online resource.)

Boys' literacy underachievement continues to garner significant attention and has been identified by journalists, educational policymakers, and scholars in the field as the cause for much concern. It has been established that boys perform less well than girls on literacy benchmark or standardized tests. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (2009), female students consistently score higher than boys on average in both reading and writing. This trend is supported by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test results. In 2006, the largest gender gap was found in reading. Girls on average outperformed boys in this area in all of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Test scores and achievement gaps such as the ones described here have been used to create a sense of "moral panic" concerning boys' literacy skills and engagement. In this paper, the authors express some concerns about the ways in which boys' literacy underachievement is defined and taken up within a context that continues to represent all boys as victims or as the "new disadvantaged." The authors argue for the need to engage with literature and analytic perspectives that are capable of addressing the complex interplay between various social, cultural, and institutional factors--such as gender, social class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality--that affect both boys' and girls' engagement with literacy. They also draw attention to the implications associated with movements to reclaim schooling as a masculine domain and suggest pedagogical rather than structural reforms.

While Socrates and Meno are discussing the nature of knowledge through considering the square-root of two with one of Meno's slaves, their wives are discussing the nature of knowledge through considering the square-root of three with one of the slave girls, using a diagram based on Raphael's "The School of Athens" being contemplated by Euclid.

In this paper we describe learners being asked to generate examples of new mathematical concepts, thus developing and exploring example spaces. First we elaborate the theoretical background for learner generated examples (LGEs) in learning new concepts. The data we then present provides evidence of the possibility of learning new concepts through a symbiosis of induction and abduction from experience and deduction from the relationships generated in exemplification. In other words, experience can be organised in such a way that shifts of understanding take place as a result of learners' own actions. Actions, in this context, include mental acts of organisational reflection.

This paper contributes to knowledge about principled action which makes a difference to learners' attainment. We report on the Improving Attainment in Mathematics Project, a project focusing on low-attaining secondary students. The purpose of the project was to introduce innovations in practice through action research with 10 teachers over 2 years, and evaluate the effect on students' learning using national test scores, teachers' reports, non-routine tasks and other performance indicators. However, this is not a study which shows how certain methods lead to better results. While it was found that learning improved, the methods and strategies the teachers used were not always generalisable across the project, indeed some were contradictory. Continued searching led to the identification of common underlying principles of teaching which different teachers manifested in different ways. Overt methods were less important than the collection of beliefs and commitments which underpinned teachers' choices. There was, however, a convergence of practice around a focus on long-term development, the process of becoming a learner of mathematics, rather than short-term gains. In addition, we had to deal with some of the realities of authentic collaborative research with practitioners.

The Smith Report has generated central questions about the mathematics education of UK adolescents. This paper highlights the close match between the goals of school mathematics, adolescence and exploratory pedagogy. This is contrasted with the prescriptive nature of current regimes. In particular, without careful attention to pedagogy it is possible that the introduction of different pathways may lead to a failure to achieve the outcomes desired by employers and universities, and to inequity in provision for students.

Discusses fairness and equity in mathematics assessment. Illustrates these issues with two studies of teachers' informal classroom assessment practices and their interpretation and evaluation of students' formal written mathematical texts. Indicates that different teachers could interpret similar work differently. Discusses and critiques approaches for improving the quality and equity of teachers' assessment. (Author/KHR)

Describes the book 'Wonder, the Rainbow and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences' which is not ostensibly connected to mathematics education but which turns out to have deep connections with mathematics, education, and mathematics education. (MM)

Examined individual differences in young children's understanding of emotion and potential correlates in the domain of family experiences. Found that individual differences in children's understanding of negative emotions were related to specific aspects of family experiences. Findings suggest complex influences of family functioning on children's understanding of the emotional aspects of social relationships. (Author/SD)

Presents findings that identify components of the practices of teachers acting as assessors of students' mathematics in the normal course of classroom work. Indicates that even teachers who have undergone some assessment training may underestimate the role of evidence interpretation, and questions about equity in the uses of teachers' judgements are raised in relation to awareness and practice. (Contains 51 references.) (Author/ASK)