Martha W. Alibali

This training program prepared four researchers to conduct scientifically rigorous math education research.

Educators often see that students have difficulty applying the lessons taught in school to new contexts, particularly in mathematics. For instance, students' knowledge of mathematics often seems like a collection of disconnected facts and procedures and is insufficient for mastering mathematic skills. To foster students' acquisition of robust and transferable knowledge, it is not clear how much of a focus should be placed on efficient retrieval of arithmetic facts or on rich understanding o...

Mathematical ideas are connected to and build upon other mathematical ideas. Understanding these connections is fundamental to having a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. This project will build on previous IES-funded research (Does Visual Scaffolding Facilitate Students' Mathematics Learning? Evidence From Early Algebra) that focused on exploring how mathematics teachers make connections between ideas during middle school lessons in beginning algebra. The purpose of this current ...

The National Center for Cognition and Mathematics Instruction has a core goal of redesigning components of a widely-used middle school mathematics curriculum-Connected Mathematics Project (CMP), and evaluating the efficacy of the redesigned curriculum materials.

What factors influence whether students comprehend and learn from instructional language? One potential factor is the nonverbal support for language comprehension provided by teachers' use of visual scaffolding, including pointing, representational gestures, diagrams, and other methods of highlighting visual information. Previous studies in noneducational settings have shown that visual scaffolding may facilitate listeners' comprehension of speech, particularly when the verbal message is am...