Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: A Contemporary Approach

This leading mathematics text for elementary and middle school educators helps you quickly develop a true understanding of mathematical concepts. It integrates rich problem-solving strategies with relevant topics and extensive opportunities for hands-on experience. By progressing from the concrete to the pictorial to the abstract, Musser captures the way math is generally taught in elementary schools.

This title will give you all the essentials mathematics teachers need for teaching at the elementary and middle school levels:

• Highlights algebraic concepts throughout the text and includes additional supporting information.
• Provides enhanced coverage of order of operations, Z-scores, union of two events, Least Common Multiple, and Greatest Common Factor.
• Focuses on solid mathematical content in an accessible and appealing way.
• Offers the largest collection of problems (over 3,000!), worked examples, and problem-solving strategies in any text of its kind.
• Includes a comprehensive, five-chapter treatment of geometry based on the van Hiele model.

Gary L. Musser is currently Professor Emeritus from Oregon State University. He earned both his B.S. in Mathematics Education in 1961 and his M.S. in Mathematics in 1963 at the University of Miami in Florida. He taught at the junior and senior high, junior college, college, and university levels for more than 30 years. He served his last 24 years teaching prospective teachers in the Department of Mathematics at Oregon State University. While at OSU, Dr. Musser developed the mathematics component of the elementary teacher program. Soon after  Professor William F. Burger joined the OSU Department of Mathematics in a similar capacity, the two of them began to write the first edition of this book. Professor Burger passed away during the preparation of the second edition, and later Professor Blake E. Peterson was hired at OSU. Professor Peterson joined Professor Musser as a coauthor beginning with the fifth edition. Professor Musser has published 40 papers in many journals, including the Pacific Journal of Mathematics, Canadian Journal of Mathematics, The Mathematics Association of America Monthly, the NCTM's The Mathematics Teacher, the NCTM's The Arithmetic Teacher, School Science and Mathematics, The Oregon Mathematics Teacher, and the Computing Teacher. In addition, he is a coauthor of two other college mathematics Books: College Geometry- A Problem-Solving Approach with Applications and Mathematics in Life, Society, and the World. He also coauthored the K-8 series Mathematics in Action. He has given more than 64 invited lectures/workshops at a variety of conferences, including NCTM and MAA conferences, and was awarded 15 federal, state, and local grants to improve the teaching of mathematics.

While Professor Musser was at OSU, he was awarded the university's prestigious College of Science Carter Award for Teaching. he is currently living in sunny Las Vegas, where he continues to write, ponder the mysteries of the stock market, entertain his faithful yellow lab, Zoey, and enjoy watching his granddaughter blossom into a young lady.

Blake E. Peterson is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics Education at Brigham Young University. He was born and raised in Logan, Utah, where he graduated from Logan High School. Before completing his BA in secondary mathematics education at Utah State University, he spent two years in Japan as a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After graduation, he took his new wife, Shauna, to southern California, where he taught and coached at Chino High School for two years. In 1988, he began graduate school at Washington State University, where he later completed an M.S. and Ph.D. in pure mathematics.

After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Peterson was hired as a mathematics educator in the Department of Mathematics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, where he taught for three years. It was at OSU that he met Gary Musser. He has since moved his wife and four children to Provo, Utah, to assume his position at Brigham Young University. As a professor, his first love is teaching, for which he has received a College Teaching he Award in the College of Science. He has also designed the "Mathematics Teaching with Technology" and "Mathematics Methods" courses at Brigham Young University.

Dr. Peterson has published papers in Rocky Mountain Mathematics Journal, The American Mathematical Monthly, The Mathematical Gazette, and Mathematics magazine, as well as NCTM's mathematics Teacher and Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. His current research interests are the mathematical dialogue that occurs during teacher collaborations. This research recently took him back to Japan where he studied mathematics student teachers at a Japanese junior high school. In addition to teaching, research, and writing, Dr. Peterson has done consulting for the College Board, founded the Utah Association of mathematics Teacher Educators, is an associate chair of the department of mathematics education at BYU.

Aside from his academic interests, Dr. Peterson enjoys spending time with his family, playing basketball, mountain biking, water skiing, and working in the yard.