Abstract

The number of research studies in mathematics education that documented persistent (and important) problems of students’ learning is large and acutely disproportionate to the number of studies that designed classroom-based interventions offering promising solutions to some of those problems. Also virtually all available interventions have long duration, thus appearing to imply that persistent problems of students’ learning require lengthy instructional treatment. While any promising solution to persistent problems of students’ learning would be welcome, we ask whether quicker solutions might also be possible. Indeed, if effective instructional interventions of short duration were found to be possible, it would be easier for researchers to tease out their theoretically essentially components and more practicable for teachers to use them in their classrooms (the interventions would impose fewer demands on teachers to reorganise their curriculum materials or schemes of work). In this talk: (1) we will argue the importance of research on the design of classroom-based interventions of short duration that can help alleviate persistent problems of students’ learning in mathematics; and (2) we will draw on findings from a 4-year design experiment to present suggestive evidence for the possibility of such interventions.