Anchoring adolescents' understanding of math concepts in rich problem-solving environments

High content standards, special education legislation, and new considerations regarding curriculum are pressuring teachers to improve the intellectual quality of students ’ learning experiences. In mathematics, students are expected to develop more sophisticated problem-solving skills at an earlier age. To date, there is little research to show how to accomplish this objective with students who have been unsuccessful in math. This study describes how students in a remedial math class fared in compari-son to prealgebra students on video-based and applied problems aligned to current math standards. Results showed that students in the remedial class matched the problem-solving performance of students in the prealgebra classes. Accounts of individual perfor-mances elaborated how students ’ understandings evolved and provided important implications for instructional practice. OBB AND BOWERS (1999) STATED, &dquo;STUDENTS who cannot participate in [classroom mathematical] practices are no longer members of the classroom community from a mathematical point of view&dquo; (p. 10). Unfortunately, this state-ment describes the situation of many students with learning disabilities who score far below their average-achieving peers in the middle grades (Cawley, Panner, Yan, & Miller, 1998), do not catch up in high school (Cawley, Kahn, & Tedesco, 1989), and eventually drop out of school (Phelps & Hanley-Maxwell, 1997). The status of these students is even more sobering in the context of international comparisons of stu-dents from 25 countries, which show average achieving stu-dents from the United States ranking 18th (Beaton et al., 1996). Numerous groups have reacted to this situation by urg-ing educators to upgrade curricula and instruction. For exam