This “Brief Report” summarizes results from a study that investigated joint effects of two innovations adopted at a high school in an affluent suburban community in the northeast United States: 4 x 4 block scheduling and the Standards-based curriculum, the Interactive Mathematics Program (IMP).

Research on the impact of Standards-based mathematics and reform calculus curricula has largely focused on changes in achievement and attitudes, generally ignoring how students experience these new programs. This study was designed to address that deficit. As part of a larger effort to characterize students’ transitions into and out of reform programs, we analyzed how 93 high school and college students perceived Standards-based and reform calculus programs as different from traditional ones.

We present a case study of teaching and learning fraction addition on number lines in one sixth-grade classroom that used the Connected Mathematics Project Bits and Pieces II materials. Our main research questions were (1) What were the primary cognitive structures through which the teacher and students interpreted the lessons? and (2) Were the teacher’s and her students’ interpretations similar or different, and why? The data afforded particularly detailed analyses of cognitive structures used by the teacher and one student to interpret fractions and their representation on number lines.

This article describes one student teacher’s interactions with mathematics curriculum materials during her internship in a kindergarten classroom. Anne used curriculum materials from two distinct programs and taught lessons multiple times to different groups of children. Although she used each curriculum in distinct ways, her curriculum use was adaptive in both cases. Anne’s specific ways of reading, evaluating, and adapting the curriculum materials contrast with previous results about beginning teachers’ curriculum use. Several key factors appeared to contribute to Anne’s particular ways of using the curriculum materials: features of her student-teaching placement, her personal resources and background, and characteristics of the materials.