This article focuses mainly on two key mathematical processes (representation, and reasoning and proof). Firstly, we observed how teachers learn these processes and subsequently identify what and how to assess learners on the same processes. Secondly, we reviewed one teacher’s attempt to facilitate the learning of the processes in his classroom. Two interrelated questions were pursued: ‘what are the teachers’ challenges in learning mathematical processes?’ and ‘in what ways are teachers’ approaches to learning mathematical processes influencing how they assess their learners on the same processes?’ A case study was undertaken involving 10 high school mathematics teachers who enrolled for an assessment module towards a Bachelor in Education Honours degree in mathematics education. We present an interpretive analysis of two sets of data. The first set consisted of the teachers’ written responses to a pattern searching activity. The second set consisted of a mathematical discourse on matchstick patterns in a Grade 9 class. The overall finding was that teachers rush through forms of representation and focus more on manipulation of numerical representations with a view to deriving symbolic representation. Subsequently, this unidirectional approach limits the scope of assessment of mathematical processes. Interventions with regard to the enhancement of these complex processes should involve teachers’ actual engagements in and reflections on similar learning.

The purpose of this study was to explore geometry spatial mathematical reasoning in Grade nine Annual National Assessments, South Africa. Conceptual Blending was the guiding theory. Document analysis within the exploratory case study was used to explore available data, the 2014 Annual National Assessment learners' scripts (n=1250). Results revealed that on average 70.5 percent of the total number of learners remembered and blended irrelevant prior knowledge not reflective to the contexts of the geometry problems. For learners who recalled the correct prior knowledge, its manipulation was either fragmented or irrelevant. The use of recalled information in wrong contexts could be due to the incorrect manipulation of the meaning of the problems. Also, responses reveal challenges on the quality of mathematics education on geometry. Therefore, the teaching and learning of geometry should focus on empowering learners with skills of recalling, blending and on manipulating problems in their contexts.

This article presents an interpretive analysis of three different mathematics teaching cases to establish where the bigger picture should lie in the teaching and learning of mathematics. We use pre-existing data collected through pre-observation and post-observation interviews and passive classroom observation undertaken by the third author in two different Grade 11 classes taught by two different teachers at one high school. Another set of data was collected through participant observation of the second author’s Year 2 University class. We analyse the presence or absence of the bigger picture, especially, in the teachers’ questioning strategies and their approach to content, guided by Tall’s framework of three worlds of mathematics, namely the ‘conceptual-embodied’ world, the ‘proceptual-symbolic’ world and the ‘axiomatic-formal’ world. Within this broad framework we acknowledge Pirie and Kieren’s notion of folding back towards the attainment of an axiomatic-formal world. We argue that the teaching and learning of mathematics should remain anchored in the bigger picture and, in that way, mathematics is meaningful, accessible, expandable and transferable.

This study used participant observation to explore students’ thinking when learning the concept of factorial functions. First-year university students undertaking a mathematics methodology course were asked to find the number of ways in which five people could sit around a circular table with five seats. Using grounded theory as a qualitative research strategy, we analysed student responses and written reflections according to the sequence of their experiential realities: practical and textual experiences. This was followed by an analysis of their reflections on both experiences in a pedagogical context. We found that the way basic mathematics operations are learned impacts on the student’s ability to experience components of new problems as familiar. Consequently, they encounter these problems as new and unfamiliar. At the same time we found that engagement with practical experience does allow for the emergence of representations that have the potential to be used as foundations for learning new and unfamiliar concepts. The blending of practical, textual and teaching experiences provoked students’ thinking and ultimately their understanding of a given new and unfamiliar mathematics concept.

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