Amid debates about the continued salience of gender in mathematics, this report summarizes an IES-funded investigation of gender-related patterns in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Class of 1998–99 (ECLS-K). Girls’ and boys’ mathematics achievement, confidence, and interest were examined, along with experiences at home and school. Teacher-reported instructional practices shed little light on gender gaps in mathematics performance; however, teachers’ perceptions of girls and boys could play a role.

This article specifies how the setup, or introduction, of cognitively demanding tasks is a crucial phase of middle-grades mathematics instruction. The authors report on an empirical study of 165 middle-grades mathematics teachers’ instruction that focused on how they introduced tasks and the relationship between how they introduced tasks and the nature of students’ opportunities to learn mathematics in the concluding whole-class discussion.

The authors examined curricular effectiveness in high schools that offered parallel paths in which students were free to study mathematics using 1 of 2 content organizational structures, an integrated approach or a (traditional) subject-specific approach. The study involved 3,258 high school students, enrolled in either Course 2 or Geometry, in 11 schools in 5 geographically dispersed states. Students in the integrated curriculum scored significantly higher than those in the subject-specific curriculum on the standardized achievement test. Significant student-level predictors included prior achievement, gender, and ethnicity.

A review of Early Algebraization: A Global Dialogue From Multiple Perspectives , edited by Jinfa Cai and Eric Knuth.

The Editorial Panel of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School is seeking submissions for its research department called Informing Practice.