Editorial.

Marshall, Linda ; Swan, Paul

Throughout 2012 we have been working with groups of Principals, assisting them to lead improvement in the teaching of mathematics in their schools. As part of this project we recommended articles for principals and school leaders to read. Many of the articles we recommended came from previous issues of APMC. It was not our intention to be biased in our selection of articles for the leaders to read--the APMC articles were simply the best of their type. They were succinct, relevant and the ideas could be applied directly to the school or classroom situation.

Over 17 years APMC has built up a reputation as a high quality journal. This issue is another example of the quality of work being carried out in Australia. All the articles are written by Australian educators working to improve the quality of mathematics teaching in Australian settings. Two articles --Bridge, Day and Hurrell's rich tasks and algebra article and Ormond's algebraic thinking article--deal with how to improve the teaching of algebra in primary school. While the articles focus on different ways to improve the teaching of algebra, elements of each may be combined in order to improve the effectiveness of algebra lessons.

Engagement is a theme that runs through two of the articles: the interactive whiteboard articles, written by Northcote, McQuillan and Beamish and Attard's engagement article. Northcote et al. examine the conditions required to ensure the best use of interactive whiteboards (IWB) in the classroom. One outcome of effective use of the IWB is student engagement. Attard applies the use of an engagement framework as a means for ensuring that our students are engaged in mathematics classes.

The final article in this edition deals with the role of assessment and how it can be used to inform teaching. Breed describes how a learning and assessment framework helped inform her teaching. Having read these articles several times in the editing process we could not help thinking about how the principals in our leadership groups would benefit from reading any one--or preferably all the articles in this issue.

As we near the end of 2012 we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the authors who contributed articles this year. A special 'thank you' goes to our Editorial Panel, who have reviewed a record number of articles this year.