Elementary Education; *Innovation; Logarithms

In this paper, we describe instruction designed to teach students about exponents and logarithms and report a pilot study to test the effectiveness of this instruction. Based on the theoretical work of Dubinsky and Sfard, we postulate a set of mental constructions that a student could make to understand the concepts of exponents and logarithms. We then describe computer and paper-and-pencil exercises to induce students to make these constructions. We report a pilot study assessing the efficacy of these exercises. Students receiving our instruction outperformed students receiving traditional instruction across a variety of measures, including performing basic computations, recalling formulae, explaining why rules of exponents and logarithms are true, and answering conceptual questions. (Author