Editorial.

Swan, Paul ; Marshall, Linda

As you may have noticed by the photographs, Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom has two new editors; well one new editor and a recycled editor. Before we share a little about ourselves we would like to take the opportunity to thank Kim Beswick and Tracey Muir for the literally hundreds of hours they must have put in over the last few years as co-editors of APMC. We have only been in the job for two months or so and have already experienced the adrenalin rush of getting our first issue out, so we certainly appreciate the time and effort required to produce a high quality journal for teachers, teacher educators and student teachers. It should be noted that Kim was clearly missing a challenge and has gone on to become the President Elect of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. We wish Kim all the best in her tenure as President of AAMT.

Let us share a few pertinent points about ourselves. Both of us work at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. We work as teacher educators in the kindergarten through primary program and as such we are acutely aware of the pressures that come upon pre-service teachers as they try to come to grips with the task of teaching mathematics. In addition, we regularly work with teachers in professional development sessions and know of the pressures being experienced by teachers across the country. Where possible, we try to develop resources that help reduce some of these pressures. We hope that a vehicle such as Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom may be used to support teachers, student teachers and teacher educators in their efforts to provide a stimulating environment for teaching mathematics. However, we cannot do this without your help. Without a free flow of articles, we will not be able to achieve our aim to continue to provide a journal of high quality. We appreciate that it can seem a little daunting to write an article, so if you would prefer, you may just want to send us a page or two outlining how you have used an idea from an article or the centre pages of the journal in your classroom.

In this issue we have three examples of how educators have integrated the teaching of mathematics with other learning areas. One idea, from Heather Crawford and Lynda Wiest, is a project where students looked at the issues, particularly from a mathematics perspective, of setting up a small business. Paul Betts and Amanda Crampton look at "Informally multiplying the World of Jillian Jiggs" by using the context of a stimulating children's story; and Anthony Lyon and Leicha Bragg discuss the development of a school garden in "Food for thought: The mathematics of the kitchen garden". Sometimes efforts to integrate mathematics with authentic situations can backfire as the mathematics takes a back seat to the other parts of the curriculum; or the activities appear overly contrived. These articles help demonstrate how an authentic experience may be undertaken without losing the integrity of the mathematics to be studied.

Bruce Moody has contributed an article explaining how he uses a maths manipulative called "decipipes" to challenge students' conceptions or misconceptions about decimal fractions. Readers who are new to APMC will note how Bruce refers to an article by Roche, published in APMC in 2010, that highlighted misconceptions such as "longer is larger". Past copies of APMC are available from AAMT should you wish to read this original article.

A further challenge for teachers over the next few years is the adoption of the new Australian Curriculum. Recently, we had the opportunity to hear Professor Peter Sullivan (the current President of The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers) and Professor Doug Clarke speak at a conference in Fremantle. Both speakers gave examples of how rich tasks may be turned into engaging and meaningful lessons. In this issue we have included some tasks, linked to the Australian Curriculum. We would appreciate hearing of your experiences trying these tasks with a group of children. Short anecdotes, work samples and the like would all be appreciated. Where possible, we will try to share teachers' experiences using these tasks.

We hope to include a feature in future editions of APMC titled "The Professors' Page", where professors working in the field of mathematics will be invited to send in short opinion pieces explaining simple but effective ways of improving the teaching of mathematics.

We also appreciate that sometimes it is difficult to keep up with all the changes going on with technology, especially as it applies to the teaching of mathematics, so we have asked two colleagues, Cathy Attard from The University of Western Sydney and Maria Northcote from Avondale College, to contribute to a regular feature called "Teaching with Technology". The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics makes frequent reference to the use of digital technologies, so we hope this feature will assist teachers to make better use of various technologies when teaching mathematics.

A final comment: as part of our aim to share ideas as widely as possible, we would like to encourage all regular readers of APMC to share their copies with colleagues. Tag an article that you think might be of interest, make a comment on a sticky note, suggest a game or idea for teachers in your school to try; or even use an article to generate a topic for discussion at a staff meeting.