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• Straight line or line segment? Students’ concepts and their thought processes

  327-336

  Vlasta Moravcová

  Jana Hromadová

  Views:

  100

  The article focuses on students’ understanding of the concept of a straight line. Attention is paid to whether students of various ages work with only part of a straight line shown or if they are aware that it can be extended. The presented results were obtained by a qualitative analysis of tests given to nearly 1,500 Czech students. The paper introduces the statistics of students’ solutions, and discusses the students’ thought processes. The results show that most of the tested students, even after completing upper secondary school, are not aware that a straight line can be extended. Finally, we present some recommendations for fostering the appropriate concept of a straight line in mathematics teaching.

  Subject Classification: 97C30, 97D70, 97G40

• Report on the "English Language Section of Varga Tamás Days 2009"

  169-175

  Krisztina Barczi

  Views:

  32

  The 9th English Language Section as a part of the Varga Tamás Days was organised by the Department of Mathematics Education at the Teacher Training Institute of the Eötvös Loránd University. We report on the talks and the following discussions in this section.

• Thoughts on Pólya’s legacy

  157-160

  Alan Schoenfeld

  Views:

  132

  There is a saying, "the older I get, the smarter my parents become." What it means, of course, is that the more we learn, the more we appreciate the wisdom of our forebears. For me, that is certainly the case with regard to George Pólya.

  There is no need to elaborate on Pólya's contributions to mathematics – he was one of the greats. See, for example, Gerald Alexanderson's (2000) edited volume The Random Walks of George Pólya, or Pólya's extended obituary (really, a
  53-page homage) in the November 1987 Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society (Chung et al., 1987). Pólya was one of the most important classical analysts of the 20th century, with his influence extending into number theory, geometry, probability and combinatorics.

• The "Teaching Mathematics and Computer Science" Journal logo's mathematical background

  55-65

  Róbert Oláh-Gál

  Júlia Salamon

  Views:

  3

  In the present contribution we give an elementary technology for drawing the geodesics, paracycles and hypercycles on the pseudosphere.

• "How to be well-connected?" An example for instructional process planning with Problem Graphs

  145-155

  Eszter Varga

  Views:

  96

  Teachers’ design capacity at work is in the focus of didactical research worldwide, and fostering this capacity is unarguably a possible turning point in the conveyance of mathematical knowledge. In Hungary, the tradition hallmarked by Tamás Varga is particularly demanding towards teachers as they are supposed to be able to plan their long-term processes very carefully. In this contribution, an extensive teaching material designed in the spirit of this tradition will be presented from the field of Geometry. For exposing its inner structure, a representational tool, the Problem Graph is introduced. The paper aims to demonstrate that this tool has potential for analyzing existing resources, helping teachers to reflect on their own preparatory and classroom work, and supporting the creation of new designs.

  Subject Classification: 97D40, 97D50, 97D80, 97G10, 97U30

• The hyperbola and Geogebra in high-school instruction

  277-285

  Eugen Ljajko

  Milan Mihajlović

  Zlatka Pavličić

  Views:

  35

  In this article the results of teaching/learning hyperbola and its characteristics in high-school using computers and GeoGebra are shown. Students involved in the research attend Engineering School "Nikola Tesla" in Leposavic, Serbia. The aim of the research was to define ways and volume of computer and GeoGebra usage in mathematics instruction in order to increase significantly students' mathematical knowledge and skills.

• Zur Visualisierung des Satzes von Pythagoras

  217-228

  Oswald Giering

  Views:

  13

  In this article we make a study of a not-classical visualization of the theorem of Pythagoras using methods of elementary school geometry. We find collinear points, copoint straight lines and congruent pairs of parallelograms. The configuration of their midpoints induces a six-midpoint and a four-midpoint theorem.

• Is it possible to develop some elements of metacognition in a Mathematics classroom environment?

  123-132

  Márton Kiss

  Eszter Kónya

  Views:

  89

  In an earlier exploratory survey, we investigated the metacognitive activities of 9th grade students, and found that they have only limited experience in the “looking back” phase of the problem solving process. This paper presents the results of a teaching experiment focusing on ninth-grade students’ metacognitive activities in the process of solving several open-ended geometry problems. We conclude that promoting students’ metacognitive abilities makes their problem solving process more effective.

  Subject Classification: 97D50, 97G40