Merrilyn Goos

• PhD, MEdSt, GradDipReading, DipEd, BSc, ATCL, LTCL
• Professor at University of the Sunshine Coast

In this paper we explore the importance of critical mathematical thinking (CMT) in mathematics education and present a framework for teachers' support of CMT development. The CMT framework consists of five key dimensions: mathematical capability, critical capability, evaluating, reasoning, and disposition. Together, these dimensions address the kno...

This study captures the teacher learning, understood as identity change, of John, an experienced out-of-field [OOF] teacher of mathematics undertaking a national professional development program, the Professional Diploma in Mathematics for Teaching [PDMT]. This research draws on the commognitive framework to document John’s first-person mathematics...

This interim report is the third of a series of reports from a longitudinal study exploring the implementation, enactment, and impact of the Framework for Junior Cycle (FJC) in post-primary schools in Ireland. This third report presents findings from the second phase of school principal interviews conducted in a representative sample of schools and...

In this chapter we review Australasian research on numeracy education published from 2020 to 2023. This is the second consecutive chapter to be dedicated to numeracy research in MERGA’s four-yearly reviews, which reflects the significance of research and policy developments in this field. Not only has numeracy become an important goal of schooling,...

This conceptual analysis paper argues for an expansion to the definition of tools in Goos et al. model of numeracy. As the digitalization of society progresses at an ever-quickening pace, mathematical processes that were once considered only necessary for higher level occupations and tasks are now everyday requirements for successful participation...

Numeracy – sometimes referred to as mathematical literacy – has emerged as a driver for curriculum reform in many international contexts. This chapter traces the emergence and interpretations of numeracy and mathematical literacy and compares their relationship to curriculum reform processes in four countries. In Australia and Ireland, numeracy is...

This special issue introduces recent research on mathematics in interdisciplinary STEM education. STEM education is widely promoted by governments around the world as a way of boosting students’ interest and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and preparing STEM-qualified workers for twenty-first century careers. Howeve...

The ICMI Study 24 Discussion Document and its research questions for theme D focused our attention on drivers that have influenced changes in the school mathematics curriculum. These were addressed in the previous texts of the theme Globalisation and internationalisation, and their impacts on mathematics curriculum reforms. In the Introduction, we...

This report is the second of a series of reports from a 4-year longitudinal study exploring the implementation, enactment and impact of the Framework for Junior Cycle in post-primary schools in Ireland. The study employs a mixed-methods, multi-dimensional research design that aims to capture the views of teachers, principals, students, parents and...

This paper revisits and reanalyses data from a study carried out in the further education and training sector in the Republic of Ireland to investigate (1) how adults access and participate in numeracy courses and (2) how adult numeracy provision might support active citizenship. We analysed 45 interviews with adult education providers, adult numer...

Curriculum documents often advocate making connections to the real world through the use of mathematical applications and modelling as a means of motivating and engaging students, as well as illustrating the usefulness of mathematics to describe and analyse real-world situations. Although applications and modelling are often coupled together, they...

Socio-cultural theories of learning argue that peer collaboration facilitates student learning. To justify the applicability of the theories, an experimental study was conducted to address the question of whether peer collaboration would affect students’ performance of regression modelling tasks. Fifty-eight students were randomly assigned to group...

For numeracy across the curriculum to become a reality in schools, teachers need to be provided with numeracy frameworks and models that align with the official curriculum, together with practical guidance for classroom implementation across year levels and subjects. This does not mean that all teachers need to become mathematics specialists; it do...

Numeracy has emerged as a driver for curriculum reform in many international contexts. This paper compares curriculum reform processes in two countries, Australia and Ireland, which have introduced policies for embedding numeracy across the school curriculum. Our analysis examines the rationale for including numeracy in the curriculum, how numeracy...

The capacity to use mathematics critically is essential for making decisions and forming judgements about challenges facing society, including those related to the economy, health and the environment. Critical Mathematical Thinking (CMT) involves the use of mathematical techniques and reasoning to address complex real-world problems in a wide range...

This report is the first of a series of thematic reports from an on-going 4-year longitudinal study exploring the implementation, enactment and impact of the Framework for Junior Cycle in post-primary schools in Ireland. The study aims to capture the opportunities and challenges presented by the Framework for Junior Cycle and aims to enable schools...

Internationally, the need to advance science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education is recognized as being vital for meeting social and economic challenges and developing a scientifically, mathematically, and technologically literate citizenry. In many countries, however, there are gender differences in the participation and achi...

In Australia and Ireland, the school curriculum requires numeracy to be developed in all subjects. Initial teacher education standards similarly require that all graduates know and understand numeracy teaching strategies. This paper reports on a study that investigated pre-service secondary teachers’ preparedness to teach for numeracy across the cu...

To develop students’ ability to justify or construct statistical evidence, students were placed into small groups in order to increase opportunities for peer discussions and social interactions in the classroom and beyond. An observation study was thus conducted to address the question of how peer discussion and student–teacher interaction would ha...

The study that we report in this chapter contributes to our broader research agenda for evaluating the impact of a national professional development programme that upskills out-of-field post-primary mathematics teachers in Ireland. The aim of the study was to compare the self-efficacy beliefs, perceived and observed classroom practices of six post-...

Research has demonstrated that teacher identity matters in mathematics education. This is of heightened concern when we consider those teaching mathematics out-of-field, a phenomenon prevalent at the post-primary level in the Irish context. A national program (PDMT) to upskill out-of-field teachers was established and current research is appraising...

Out-of-field teaching refers to the practice of assigning teachers to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. This paper reports on a study evaluating the impact of a national professional development programme for out-of-field teachers of post-primary school mathematics in Ireland – the Professional Diploma in Mathematics for...

From 2017 to 2019 the International Science Council funded a project investigating the gender gap in science disciplines. The aim of the project was to collect and analyse data on the gender gap and to create a database of good practices for encouraging girls and young women to study and pursue education and careers in the mathematical, computing,...

This paper addresses the question of whether peer collaboration affects students’ performance of regression modelling tasks, an experimental study consisting of a test was conducted in a computing laboratory. Collaborating groups of students were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: pre-task discussion (i.e., group members had...

Our everyday lives have been transformed in 2020. Key features of this transformation have been the significance of COVID-related numeracy in our everyday lives and the realisation of the story it might tell about lives, health and death. In recent years, governments and educators around the world have been advocating for numeracy as an essential s...

The pre-service teacher followed in this paper aimed to act as an agent of change during a time of reform in Irish secondary mathematics education. A teacher-researcher led action research project was conducted to depict the reality of the situation regarding the implementation of mathematical problem solving from a variety of perspectives-namely t...

Research into the learning and development of mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) is an emerging field that offers many opportunities as well as challenges. This book provides an opportunity to gather together international perspectives on MTE learning and development and identify future research directions. Chapters in the book address three majo...

Research in mathematics teacher education as a distinctive field of inquiry has grown substantially over the past 10-15 years. Within this field there is emerging interest in how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) themselves learn and develop. Until recently there were few published studies on this topic, and the processes by which mathematics te...

Students’ motivation to learn, which is a common topic for discussion, is the theme of this paper in a specific context, i.e., statistics learning within an IT environment that was organized to promote social interaction among students as well as between students and a teacher in statistical computing laboratory. Data were gathered from a questionn...

A common aim of many national curricula is the development of students’ 21st century skills. This is frequently predicated upon interdisciplinary STEM teaching and learning. This chapter focuses on the Australian, Irish, and Scottish lower secondary school curricula and presents a comparative analysis of curricular documents from the three countrie...

This report commissioned by the Gender Balance Advisory Group in Ireland sets out what is known about critical barriers to girls’ participation in STEM education and STEM learning, while also highlighting effective interventions to increase participation of girls in STEM. The STEM Education Policy Statement 2017-2026 acknowledges that there is a ne...

Students’ motivationStudents’ motivation to learn, which is a common topic for discussion, is the theme of this paper in a specific context, i.e., statistics learning within an IT environment that was organized to promote social interactionSocial interaction among students as well as between students and a teacher in statistical computing laborator...

Set amidst the backdrop of concerns related to the entry of students to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers, this study seeks to understand the Professional STEM Identity status of STEM undergraduate students and STEM professionals. This study utilizes a cross-sectional research design to compare participant scores in t...

This book reports on a three-year project (2017–2019) funded by the International Science Council and involving eleven scientific partner organizations. The main goal of the project was to investigate the gender gap in STEM disciplines from different angles, globally and across disciplines. We have performed (i) a global survey of scientists with m...

This chapter explores the ways in which the discipline of mathematics underpins, illuminates or can be integrated with other disciplines in the context of mathematics pre-service teacher education. Drawing on my experience as a mathematics teacher educator and mathematics education researcher, I compare different models of integration I have used o...

Since 2004, each edition of the MERGA Research Review has invited the previous editorial team to write a chapter that reflects on issues that have occurred since the last Review. As the editorial team for Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia 2012–2015 (RiMEA-9), we have followed suit. The reflection chapters often compare the current ME...

A project conducted in six Australian universities was designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators in pre-service teacher education programmes. This paper reports on two approaches to integrating mathematics content and pedagogy arising from these collaborations: co-developed and co-taught cou...

“Out-of-field” teaching refers to the practice of assigning secondary school teachers to teach subjects that do not match their training or education. This practice is an issue of concern in many countries around the world, and seems particularly prevalent in the teaching of mathematics. The aim of this paper is to analyse the design principles und...

Increasingly, digital technologies are being utilised to provide opportunities for teacher professional learning (PL) in fully online, blended and face-to-face environments. Videos have been used extensively across the three modes of delivery but there appears little research on the conceptual framing underpinning their development. This article de...

A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It? This book reports on a three-year project (2017–2019) funded by the International Science Council and involving eleven scientific partner organizations. The main goal of the project was to investigate the gender gap in STEM di...

In this paper, we offer a comparative review of research on understanding and promoting students’ mathematical thinking. The sources for the review are papers that were published in Educational Studies in Mathematics (ESM) during two windows of time: 1994–1998 and 2014–2018. Selection of these two time periods enables us to comment on the “state of...

In times of rapid technological innovation and global challenges, the development of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) competencies becomes important. They improve the personal scientific literacy of citizens, enhance international economic competitiveness and are an essential foundation for responsible citizenship, including...

The conduct and publishing of mathematics education research is an international concern. Yet new researchers in our field often struggle to frame and communicate their research so that it is relevant and accessible to an international audience. This chapter shares an international journal editor’s expectations for publishable manuscripts, elaborat...

This chapter provides a description of the distinctive features of Educational Studies in Mathematics, a major journal in mathematics education, together with information and advice on manuscript submission, reviewing processes, and editorial decision making. Key aspects of the journal’s history are also highlighted to draw attention to its role in...

This article examines possibilities for using Valsiner’s zone theory to understand identity formation of mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher educators. We situate our analysis within a sociological frame for identity research, in which identity is interpreted as an action rather than an acquisition. Valsiner’s theoretical approach is based...

Classroom discourse is beneficial to learning as enabling students to verbalize their thoughts to sustain discussion. Through discussions, their thoughts would be articulated and thinking would be enhanced. But, how the discourse promotes statistical thinking when integrating IT into statistics classroom is not known. Through an observation study,...

The knowledge that mathematics teacher educators need has attracted limited but increasing attention in recent years. The papers in this special issue build on emerging themes from that work and raise additional questions that contribute towards a future research agenda in the field. Several of the articles develop conceptualisations of teacher kno...

Classroom talk plays a significant role in a teaching and learning process, but how classroom talk promotes statistics learning and statistical thinking is not clearly known. An observation study was therefore conducted to analyse student talk while collaboratively working at computers. When attempting the task of deriving the meaning of a scatterp...

This article examines some of the complexities associated with developing financially literate, enterprising young Australians through school education. We aimed to explore what seems to influence students in pricing goods for sale within their school community. Data were collected from more than 300 years 5 and 6 students (10–12 years of age) in f...

In many countries, pre-service teacher education programs are structured so that mathematics content is taught in the university’s mathematics department and mathematics pedagogy in the education department. Such program structures make it difficult to authentically interweave content with pedagogy in ways that acknowledge the roles of both mathema...

The special issue, “Theoretical Foundations of Engagement in Mathematics: Empirical studies from the field”, provides a vehicle to promote the elaboration of significant theories and frameworks relevant to mathematics education research—specifically learners’ engagement in mathematics. The topic of student engagement has been a burgeoning area of i...

In 2014, the Australian Commonwealth government appointed the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) to investigate and make recommendations regarding initial teacher education in Australia, with the view to better preparing new teachers for the classroom. In early 2015 the TEMAG report, Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers, was relea...

In the biosciences, quantitative skills are an essential graduate learning outcome. Efforts to evidence student attainment at the whole of degree programme level are rare and making sense of such data is complex. We draw on assessment theories from Sadler (evaluative expertise) and Boud (sustainable assessment) to interpret final-year bioscience st...

Excellent mathematics teachers make a major difference to the learning outcomes of the students they teach. What are the professional skills and knowledge that really matter?..Teaching Secondary School Mathematics is a research based introduction to the professional knowledge, attributes and practices needed to teach mathematics well at secondary l...

Information Technology (IT) plays an educational role in organizing the learning environment to promote social interaction among students as well as between the students and teacher, but little is known about what underlying factors influence such social interaction within the context of statistics learning. A questionnaire-based survey was conduct...

Zielsetzung: Anhand eines Fallbeispiels wird gezeigt, welche langfristigen, fur die Patientin sehr belastende Folgen ein hohergradiger Dammriss haben kann. Materialien: Fallbeispiel. Methoden: Beschreibung des Falles und Literaturubersicht. Ergebnisse: Eine 42-jahrige IIG/IP wird uns von den koloproktologischen Kollegen zur Mitbeurteilung bei Stuhl...

Application of mathematical and statistical thinking and reasoning, typically referred to as quantitative skills, is essential for university bioscience students. First, this study developed an assessment task intended to gauge graduating students’ quantitative skills. The Quantitative Skills Assessment of Science Students (QSASS) was the result, w...

This article presents preliminary results from a survey commissioned for ICME 13 (2016) focusing on “Teachers Working and Learning Through Collaboration”. It takes as a starting point a previous survey, commissioned for ICME 10 in 2004 that focused on Mathematics Teacher Education. The current survey focuses centrally on teachers involved in collab...

How do a student’s attitude, learning behaviour and achievement in mathematics or statistics relate to each other and how do these change during the course of their undergraduate degree program? These are some of the questions that were addressed in a longitudinal study at a major Australian university. The study spanned over three years and used a...

Collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators may provide a means of improving the quality of pre-service teacher education for prospective teachers of mathematics. Some preliminary findings of a project that investigates this type of interdisciplinary collaboration, both within and across institutions, are reported on in this pape...

Mathematics anxiety is a significant barrier to mathematical learning. In this article, we propose that state or on-task mathematics anxiety impacts on performance, while trait mathematics anxiety leads to the avoidance of courses and careers involving mathematics. We also demonstrate that integrating perspectives from education, psychology and neu...

This chapter presents an overview of the most recent volume in a series of reviews entitled Research in Mathematics Education in Australasia. Each of MERGA's four-yearly reviews proudly highlights and critiques the research in mathematics education in Australasia over the previous 4 years. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the history of t...