Introduction
My struggling students just sit there; they don’t ask for help.She has her hand up right away, not even attempting to solve the problem on
her own. She is waiting for me to tell her what to do.He let his partner do all the work and just copied what his partner wrote.
When I asked him how the figured out the problem, he had no idea.We have all heard stories like these about students who are struggling,
whether they are students on Individualized Education Programs or others
who are having difficulty. Sometimes this “learned helplessness” comes from
years of being told what to do, to follow a procedure step-by-step. Other
times, after many experiences with failure, these students have internalized
that they cannot learn (Mercer 2008).
Seeing oneself as a learner is basic to success in school, no matter what
the subject. What can we do about these students who struggle in mathe-
matics class? How can we teach them to be mathematical thinkers? What
it means to learn and do mathematics and what that involves is a compli-
cated topic that has been written about by many prominent researchers
(Schoenfeld 1992). Although there is no simple answer or list of foolproof
techniques, the essays in this section describe strategies that teachers have
used to help their struggling students become more confident, independent
learners of mathematics. These teachers expect that their students who
struggle can learn mathematics with understanding if given support. This