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This study investigates the critical transition from secondary to tertiary mathematics education, focusing on students’ challenges and the impact of curriculum reforms in Sweden. Through an analysis of diagnostic test scores and admission data from Umeå University over the period 2006–2021, we examine the evolving mathematical competencies of incoming engineering students and the broader implications of these shifts for educational policy and student preparedness for higher education. Our findings indicate a significant improvement in students’ mathematical readiness in the latter years of the study, correlating with the implementation of curriculum changes and variations in admission statistics. This research documents the positive outcomes of these educational reforms on student preparedness. It places these findings within a global context, highlighting the universal challenges and responses in mathematics education transitions. The study underscores the complex dynamics of the secondary-tertiary transition and provides valuable insights into the specific mathematical areas where students have shown varying degrees of improvement.

In mathematics classrooms, it is common practice to work through a series of comparable tasks provided in a textbook. A central question in mathematics education is if tasks should be accompanied with solution methods, or if students should construct the solutions themselves. To explore the impact of these two task designs on student behavior during repetitive practice, an eye-tracking study was conducted with 50 upper secondary and university students. Their eye movements were analyzed to study how the two groups shifted their gaze both within and across 10 task sets. The results show that when a solution method was present, the students reread this every time they solved the task, while only giving minute attention to the illustration that carried information supporting mathematical understanding. Students who practiced with tasks without a solution method seemed to construct a solution method by observing the illustration, which later could be retrieved from memory, making this method more efficient in the long run. We discuss the implications for teaching and how tasks without solution methods can increase student focus on important mathematical properties.

To engage with specialized subject content, students must develop adequate reading skills. In mathematics, this includes to integrate information from different semiotic resources. This study elucidates how differences in the structural connections between mathematical symbols and written language in mathematics texts can affect the reading process. With the help of eye-tracking techniques, we investigated differences in focus and navigation when 15-year-olds read task texts in two distinct designs: a traditional design with written language presented in lines and all connections based on semantics; and a design including a graphic emphasizing links between symbols and explanations. While the graphic design was found to facilitate fast interpretation of the symbol–language connections, the traditional design seemed to encourage global reading, involving more text parts. When designing texts for mathematics learning, structural connections may be chosen to adapt texts to various student groups and purposes.

This study is based on a framework of algorithmic and creative mathematical rea- soning and focuses on students’ strategy choices in both practice and test. Previous research indicates that students that practice mathematics with tasks with given solution methods are outperformed in later test by students that have to construct solution methods during practice. Video recordings, students’ written solutions, and student interviews from ten university students provides data on strategy choices. The analysis was carried out to capture students’ strategy choices and reasons for these choices. The results showed that there was no real difference in how the stu- dents solved the tasks in the test. Regardless of practice condition, more or less the same solution strategies were used in the test situation.

This data article contains eye-tracking data (i.e., dwell time and fixations), Z-transformed cognitive data (i.e., Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices and Operation span), and practice and test scores from a study in mathematics education. This data is provided in a supplementary file. The method section describes the mathematics tasks used in the study. These mathematics tasks are of two kinds, with and without solution templates, to induce different types of mathematical reasoning.

Imitative teaching and learning approaches have been dominating in mathematics education. Although more creative approaches (e.g. problem-based learning) have been proposed and implemented, a main challenge of mathematics education research is to document robust links between teaching, tasks, student activities and learning. This study investigates one aspect of such links, by contrasting tasks providing algorithmic solution templates with tasks requiring students’ constructions of solutions and relating this to students’ learning processes and outcomes. Information about students’ task solving strategies are gathered by corneal eye-tracking, which is related to subsequent post-test performances and individual variation in cognitive proficiency. Results show that students practicing by creative tasks outperform students practicing by imitative algorithmic tasks in the post-test, but also that students that perform less well on creative tasks tend to try ineffective imitative strategies.

Research studies have shown that to develop conceptual understanding of mathema- tics, practice needs to that focus this skill. In this study, the aim is to examine how different practice tasks, which promotes either imitative or creative mathematical reasoning, can influence which variables (i.e., cognitive abilities, mathematics grade, and gender) that are important for task completion. Two earlier studies show that cog- nitive abilities are more important in the test situation when students have practiced with imitative tasks. The result from this study indicate that although cognitive abilities are important when practicing with creative tasks, the influence of cognition is only implicit during the test. Since students often practice imitatively with given solution methods, this study suggests that a substantial part of what we test in school could be cognitive abilities rather than mathematics. 

Research studies have shown that to develope conceptual understanding of mathematics, practice needs to that focus this skill. In this study, the aim is to examine how different practice tasks, which promotes either imitative or creative mathematical reasoning, can influence which variables (i.e., cognitive abilities, mathematics grade, and gender) that are important for task completion. Two earlier studies show that cognitive abilities are more important in the test situation when students have practiced with imitative tasks. The result from this study indicate that although cognitive abilities are important when practicing with creative tasks, the influence of cognition is only implicit during the test. Since students often practice imitatively with given solution methods, this study suggests that a substantial part of what we test in school could be cognitive abilities rather than mathematics.

This paper reports the long-term results of an intervention study with 134 six-year-old students from seven preschool-classes in northern Sweden to evaluate whether the Think, Reason and Count in Preschool-class programme (TRC) could prevent at-risk students from becoming low-performing students in mathematics. Whereas the pre-test score revealed that the intervention and the control group preformed equally, scores on the delayed follow-up-test in Grade 3 showed that the intervention group performed better than the control group and that at-risk students had closed the performance gap between themselves and their not-at-risk peers.