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The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a systematic literature review that explore how recent research on instructional leadership has addressed the role of mathematics and science instruction.

Using Hallinger’s (2014) approach to conducting systematic reviews, the review included 109 peer-reviewed articles published since 2008 in leading mathematics and science education journals. An a priori coding scheme based upon key leadership behaviors articulated in Hitt and Tucker’s (2016) unified leadership framework informed the analysis presented.

Results indicate that leaders support content area instruction by facilitating high-quality instructional experiences through curricular and assessment leadership. Leadership frequently involves establishing organizational conditions that support teachers’ efforts to improve their own practice instead of direct leadership action on the part of instructional leaders. This support takes different forms and can include distributing leadership to teacher leaders with content area experience as well as using resources strategically to provide professional development or instructional coaching.

The review strengthens the connections between the instructional leadership, mathematics and science literatures, and identifies some of the leadership practices that these literatures deem important for instructional improvement. The review also reveals the potential for future research exploring the influence of a particular content area on supervisory practice and leadership discourse.

While deficits for students with learning disabilities (LD) are prevalent in almost all aspects of mathematics, difficulty in the application and understanding of problem-solving tasks are much more challenging to remediate than computational and procedural skills. Given the complexities involved in authentic problem-solving activities emphasized in current mathematics standards and the inherent challenges presented to students with LD, the importance of using strategies and techniques guided by evidence-based practices is paramount. Yet, ineffective instructional strategies for problem solving are still widespread in both mathematics curricula and available teacher resources. In this chapter, we provide a description of a commonly used ineffective problem-solving strategy (i.e., the keyword strategy), an overview of the keyword research, and an explanation for its ineffectiveness. We conclude with a description of three evidenced-based problem-solving approaches and practices that significantly improve the mathematical performance of students with LD.

A project was undertaken to determine the appropriateness of providing subject‐based courseware in an academic library's software center or microcomputer lab. The courseware was intended to provide remedial instructional support to re‐entry students in selected subjects. For this project, college algebra became the chosen subject because there appeared to be widespread local agreement that a number of adult students needed remedial instruction in college algebra. The question of the appropriateness of CAI in the library remains open. This service seems to be a viable one for academic libraries to offer. Success would be dependent on wide ranging cooperation involving the library, teaching faculty, computing staff, and instructional technologists.

Mathematics can be a challenging content area for all students and especially for students with disabilities. Assistive technology can support the access, participation and achievement of students with disabilities in mathematics in general and in inclusive mathematics settings in particular. In this chapter, assistive technology to academic and functional mathematics will be discussed; particularly, manipulatives, calculators and other technology-mediated mathematics interventions (e.g., apps or computer programs) will be highlighted.

In the USA, school districts are funding mathematics coaching positions to provide school-level support to teachers. The purpose of this paper is to survey school personnel whose job responsibilities included mathematics coaching in order to examine their job responsibilities and what they felt that their job responsibilities should be.

In all, 67 elementary school mathematics coaches completed a survey that included 30 aspects of the job of elementary school mathematics leaders.

Quantitative analyses indicated that there were statistically significant differences between their actual roles and their preferred roles on 24 of the 30 items. This means that coaches reported that the aspects of their current role did not align to what they thought their job should be.

The findings indicate a need to collect further information in a longitudinal study, potentially from a combination of surveys, interviews, and observations, about elementary mathematics coaches’ job responsibilities and the impact that coaches have on both teachers and students.

The findings indicate a need for school leaders, mathematics leaders (coaches), and classroom teachers to work together to utilize mathematics leaders more effectively so as to best support teachers’ instruction and students’ learning.

While some research has been published on literacy coaching, the research base on mathematics coaching is scant. This study contributes to the knowledge base about the roles and duties of coaches in elementary school settings.

This chapter reviews research on math disabilities (MD) from two different points of view: Italian and American. Our goal is to gain consensus on identifying the cognitive deficits that underlie problems associated with MD as well as to provide an overview of some of the instructional approaches to remediate these deficits. The review outlines similarities and differences in the research perspectives between the two countries. Although the results show some consensus on the identification of MD and the cognitive mechanisms associated with this deficit (e.g., working memory), some differences remain between the two research perspectives (e.g., incidence of MD).

Before 2011, student performance rates in college algebra and trigonometry at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&TSU) were consistently below 50%. To remedy this situation, the Mathematics Department implemented the math emporium model (MEM) instructional method. The underlying principle behind MEM is that students learn math by doing math (Twigg, 2011). The MEM requires students to work on math problems and spend more time on material that they do not understand while allowing them to spend less time on material that they do understand. Also, students receive immediate feedback on problems from teaching assistants as they work through their online assignments. After implementing the MEM, student pass rates improved for both the MEM and traditional sections. Data to date also show that female students outperform male students in both instructional models. Further study is needed to determine the factors that have caused improvement in pass rates in addition to the implementation of the MEM. Some important lessons learned by the NCA&TSU math faculty from implementing the MEM into the college algebra and trigonometry courses are that successful implementation requires a long-term commitment, internal and external collaborations, and the collective ability to determine what works for the local setting.

Amidst a worldwide concern with teacher quality, recent teacher reforms often focus on how to certify teachers, how to evaluate teachers, how to recruit the best and brightest people to be teachers, and how to fire bad teachers. The political discourse of these policy reforms oftentimes depicts teachers as largely inactive transmitters of knowledge and does not recognize the agency they have in affecting standards. Yet, such a narrow framework may suppress teacher pedagogy, practices, and also teacher beliefs. In this chapter, we seek to understand the extent that two types of math teacher beliefs – traditional and constructivist orientations – are related to national cultural factors. In doing so, we test both “culturist” and “neo-institutional” hypotheses by observing how those beliefs vary across different nations.

This chapter reviews the intervention research literature – particularly interventions deemed evidence-based – for students with intellectual disability across academic and life-skills instruction. Although the focus of this chapter is the spectrum of students covered under the term “intellectual disability,” the majority of research on evidence-based interventions for students with intellectual disability focus on students with more moderate and severe intellectual disability, rather than students with mild intellectual disability. The majority of the interventions determined to be evidence-based within the literature for students with intellectual disability – across both academic and life skills – tend to be those that fall within the purview of systematic instruction.

The purpose of this descriptive study is to investigate why some elementary children have difficulties mastering addition and subtraction calculation tasks.

The researchers have examined error types in addition and subtraction calculation made by 697 Portuguese students in elementary grades. Each student completed a written assessment of mathematical knowledge. A system code (e.g. FR = failure to regroup) has been used to grade the tests. A reliability check has been performed on 65 per cent randomly selected exams.

Data frequency analyses reveal that the most common type of error was miscalculation for both addition (n = 164; 38.6 per cent) and subtraction (n = 180; 21.7 per cent). The second most common error type was related to failure to regroup in addition (n = 74; 17.5 per cent) and subtraction (n = 139; 16.3 per cent). Frequency of error types by grade level has been provided. Findings from the hierarchical regression analyses indicate that students’ performance differences emerged as a function of error types which indicated students’ types of difficulties.

There are several limitations of this study: the use of a convenient sample; all schools were located in the northern region of Portugal; the limited number of problems; and the time of the year of assessment.

Students’ errors suggested that their performance in calculation tasks is related to conceptual and procedural knowledge and skills. Error analysis allows teachers to better understand the individual performance of a diverse group and to tailor instruction to ensure that all students have an opportunity to succeed in mathematics.

Error analysis helps teachers uncover individual students’ difficulties and deliver meaningful instruction to all students.

This paper adds to the international literature on error analysis and reinforces its value in diagnosing students’ type and severity of math difficulties.