Dung Tran

• Ph.D. Mathematics Education
• Associate Professor at Federation University

This commentary highlights the contribution that careful and systematic analyses of curriculum or content standards can make to questions and issues important in the mathematics education field. We note the increased role that curriculum standards have played as part of a standards-based education reform strategy. We also review different methods u...

Through the lenses of statistical investigations and cognitive demands, we examined bivariate data tasks offered in US high school mathematics textbook series—a popular representative of three curriculum types: Traditional, Integrated, and Hybrid. We developed a framework grounded in literature of association topics for the inclusion and exclusion...

Repeated sampling approaches to inference that rely on simulations have recently gained prominence in statistics education, and probabilistic concepts are at the core of this approach. In this approach, learners need to develop a mapping among the problem situation, a physical enactment, computer representations, and the underlying randomization an...

The choice and context of authentic problems—such as designing a staircase or a soda can—illustrate the modeling process in several stages.

Educators lament consistent observations of students’ suspension of reality and sense-making when solving word problems. These problems mainly focus on mathematics targeted at elementary and middle school levels, such as arithmetic or proportional reasoning. This study examines high school students’ modelling competencies when they are confronted w...

Debates about effective teaching practices, whether explicit instruction or inquiry-based, have resurfaced. A recent national report on teacher education in Australia has strongly advocated for explicit modelling as one of the effective pedagogical practices. There is a need for a valid instrument to examine preservice teachers’ beliefs and whether...

Statistics in the 2018 Vietnam General Education Curriculum for Mathematics is emphasized from Grade 2 to Grade 12, helping develop students’ competences and qualities. However, students still struggle to connect and apply statistical concepts to real-life situations. This study used a flipped classroom model to teach 10th-graders statistics to dev...

Statistical reasoning (SR) is an essential skill for students in studying statistics. This study aims to develop SR for university students through an appropriately designed course in statistics. Employing a quasi-experimental design, this study evaluated students' SR changes as they participated in a research-informed statistics course, designed t...

Current teacher attrition in Australia and globally has created an untenable situation for many schools, teachers and the profession. This paper reports on research that examined the critical issue of teacher attrition from the perspective of former classroom teachers and school leaders. Although there is extensive national and global research rela...

This study draws on quantitative reasoning research to explain how secondary mathematics preservice teachers’ (PSTs) modelling competencies changed as they participated in a teacher education programme that integrated modelling experience. Adopting a mixed methods approach, we documented 110 PSTs’ competencies in Vietnam using an adapted Modelling...

This conceptual paper puts forward the construct termed teacher curriculum competence, which is an amalgamation of theoretical or formal and personal practical teacher knowledge and orientations in relation to curriculum. We situate the competence in institutional, political, and philosophical contexts. Drawing on research related to mathematics cu...

This paper reports on the representation of the four proficiency strands in the content descriptors in the latest iteration of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (version 9.0). Using a content analysis methodology, we documented the frequency of verbs used in the F-6 content descriptors and mapped these verbs to the proficiency strands. Fluency...

This paper reports an investigation into what 13 pre-service teachers (PTs) enrolled in a secondary mathematics methods unit in one university noticed when providing written feedback on peers’ lesson plans. Drawing on the first two elements of the curricular noticing framework (Dietiker et al., 2018), we identify aspects of the lesson plans the PTs...

This qualitative study investigates remote Australian primary school parents' attitudes towards their children's learning of mathematics and the role of technology. Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, results revealed that parents aimed to provide the best mathematics learning opportunities for their children, yet they felt obso...

Teachers’ planning as a research area still receives little attention. This study focuses on developing a research-informed framework to assess teachers’ statistics lesson plans. Using a design-based research approach, we developed a framework that includes (a) two criteria related to learning intentions (clear and comprehensive), (b) four criteria...

Research on mathematics teacher knowledge has gained momentum recently; however, research on teacher planning is scarce, especially using lesson plans as the primary data source. This study examines how teachers' lesson plans change as they participate in a professional development, supporting them in implementing the Vietnamese reformed Curriculum...

Little is known about children’s participation in early childhood education (ECE) in regional and remote areas in Australia. This research addresses this gap by investigating the perspectives of early childhood centre directors and educators who work directly in ECE services in these areas. The study used a two-stage mixed methodology, including fo...

Objective: Analyse the linguistic and numerical complexity of COVID-19-related health information communicated from Australian national and state governments and health agencies to national and local early childhood education (ECE) settings. Methods: Publicly available health information (n = 630) was collected from Australian national and state...

This paper details the research design of a multidisciplinary, multi-method, collaborative research project investigating health communication from the experiences of the early childhood education (ECE) sector during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the rapidly evolving pandemic, the ECE sector was instantly tasked with expanding their required health p...

This research investigates how a lesson study (LS) on designing and implementing challenging tasks impacts Vietnamese high school mathematics teacher knowledge and beliefs. Its contribution highlights cultural considerations when adopting LS to the forefront to contextualize the impacts. The results show that the teachers developed their specialize...

With the myriad theories generated through research over the years, a continuing challenge for researchers is to navigate the multitude of theories in order to communicate their research, integrate empirical results, and make progress as a field by building upon empirical research. The Social Unit of Learning project was purposefully designed so th...

This article addresses the challenge raised by researchers about how online learning provides an opportunity for interaction as compared to a face-to-face classroom. We exemplify how the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework informed our design of learning opportunities for primary mathematics preservice teachers (PSTs) in two courses offered...

Collaborative problem solving (CPS) has received much attention recently, however little is known about how people work in CPS and how to support students working productively in the setting. CPS requires both social and cognitive aspects. This paper focused on the social aspect to examine how students act on their agency in CPS. Using data from a...

To address the upcoming reform curriculum initiative following competency-based learning in Vietnam, this study examines how variations of a contextualized task allow students to experience the mathematical modelling process. We explore how Grade 10 students respond to tasks with different levels of authenticity when they first attempt such tasks....

This conceptual paper proposes a model to describe the quality of student dialogue during participative collaborative problem solving. Drawing on the participation metaphor of learning, we argue that the construct of mathematical sophistication is useful to describe the quality. We then present two frameworks, mathematical competencies and mathemat...

The teaching approaches of mathematics derived from humanity involve positive interactions that support meaningful and relevant learning. The main objective of the teaching approaches is to prepare students with the competence to solve daily life problems and one of the most important tools is using authentic tasks. There are different opinions on...

To meet the demand of incoming school curriculum reform focusing on competency-based learning in Vietnam, this paper reports on an innovation project on developing secondary mathematics preservice teachers’ (PSTs) mathematical literacy and preparing them to teach mathematics contextually. We developed a curriculum and studied the effectiveness of t...

With online learning becoming a more viable and attractive option for students and teachers around the world, we discuss how one effort in the U.S. is focused on designing, implementing, and evaluating MOOCs designed for professional development of mathematics teachers. We share design principles and learning opportunities, as well as discuss speci...

This paper reports on efforts to characterise levels of mathematical sophistication for students in collaborative mathematics problem solving. Using a laboratory classroom in Australia, data were captured with multiple cameras and audio inputs. Students worked individually, in pairs, and in small groups (4 to 6 students). We focused on investigatin...

This study examined non-traditional pathway preservice teachers’ attitudes towards mathematics to inform decision-making on designing the course and the units related to mathematics and how to support the teachers in transitioning smoothly into higher education programs. We adopted a mixed design approach to document teachers’ attitudes towards mat...

Statistics receives attention through global curriculum. Some have designed professional development for teachers to develop their statistical content and pedagogy, typically on a small local scale. Online courses can expand the number of teachers involved and create communities beyond school or district lines. For a “massive” and “open” course, th...

With online learning becoming a more viable and attractive option for students and teachers around the world, we discuss how one effort in the U.S. is focused on designing, implementing, and evaluating MOOCs designed for professional development of mathematics teachers. We share design principles and learning opportunities, and discuss how these MO...

This study examined the alignment of three selected U.S. high school textbooks series with the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) regarding the treatment of statistical association. A framework grounded in the literature for inclusion and exclusion of reasoning about association topics was developed, and textbook entries were compa...

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) is a primary focus of attention for many stakeholders' (e.g., teachers, district mathematics leaders, and curriculum developers) intent on improving mathematics education. This article reports on specific content shifts related to the geometry domain in the middle grades (6–8) mathematics curr...

Bivariate relationships play a critical role in school statistics, and textbooks are significant in determining student learning. In recent years, researchers have emphasized the importance of learning trajectories (LTs) in mathematics education. In this study, I examined LTs for bivariate data in relation to the development of covariational reason...