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This paper analyzes 16 preservice secondary mathematics education majors' mathematical autobiographies. Participants wrote about their previous experiences with mathematics. All participants discussed why they wanted to become mathematics teachers with the key factors being past experience with mathematics teachers, previous success in mathematics classes, and the intrinsic rewards associated with helping others with mathematics problems.

This study explores the myriad definitions and conceptualizations of mathematics, with a particular focus on how undergraduate students in a mathematics course designed for non-mathematics intensive majors define the term. Students enrolled in this particular course at a regional university in the Midwest were asked the open-ended question: "What is math?" The researchers employed content analysis in their analysis and interpretation of the data. A number of categories emerged, with the modal category being the conception of mathematics as problem solving that occurs in mathematics classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State and national initiatives attempt to increase the quantity and quality of secondary mathematics and science teachers. Research suggests that if one could appeal to something inside of people or about the process of teaching and learning itself then one might draw current mathematics and science graduate students into secondary teaching. This study placed eight mathematics and science graduate students in secondary schools for ten hours a week. Pre- and post-measures of their interest level in becoming secondary teachers were made. Overall, graduate students decreased in their desire to become secondary teachers. The main reasons were (1) fellows wanted to work with higher-level mathematics and science, (2) fellows felt students were not behaved and unmotivated; (3) fellows did not view being a teacher as a career but only as a job; and (4) fellows felt school systems had to do too many things that fellows did not want to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Essentially a focus group to discuss textbook related issues, a meeting of calculus instructors from a wide variety of environments was convened and sponsored by McGraw Hill to provide feedback on the current state of the calculus classroom. This paper provides a description of the group's discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the tasks faced by undergraduate mathematics departments is placing incoming students into the appropriate mathematics classes for their abilities. This is often accomplished through giving a placement test at the time of student orientation. Dissatisfaction with the results of the placement test used at our university prompted us to write a new one. In this paper, we describe the writing of the new placement test and provide detailed results of a validity study on the test. Our results led us to conclude that placement testing does not work very well, and to suggest that undergraduate mathematics departments consider using existing data rather than give a separate placement test. In spite of this conclusion, we do decide to continue with our placement test, and we offer reasons for doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]