Synthesis — Beliefs and Mathematics Education: Implications for Learning, Teaching, and Research

Recent research on beliefs has made considerable progress in explaining the processes involved in mathematics learning and teaching. Beliefs have strong relationships to both affective and cognitive processes that are important in mathematics education. The chapters in this section are reviewed with regard to the varied definitions of the term “belief,” the difficulty of reaching a consensus on one definition and the general agreement on the core commonalties of the construct. A framework for classifying and using different types of definitions is proposed, and methods and implications for research are discussed.

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