DEVELOPING AND USING SYMBOL SENSE IN MATHEMATICS

It is my belief that this driving force is not the monopoly of only a few. Thus, in my work with students and teachers in junior and high school mathematics (particularly, in algebra), and with students who are not mathematically inclined (and who have difficulties with mathematics), I felt the need to identify what such a quest for meaning might look like, whether and how it develops, and whether and how it can be integrated, fostered and supported by instruction. Today there seems to be a wide agreement that meaning is constructed anew in idiosyncratic ways anytime someone learns or handles ideas. With the belief that watching and trying to understand how those processes take place can be insightful, I started to collect interesting behaviors of students and teachers working on algebraic problems. Algebra learning has always interested me and I was involved in research studies of algebra beginners (see, for example, Arcavi, 1995).