This guide aims to help teachers achieve the capability to foster children's mathematical power. The investigative approach attempts to foster mathematical power by making mathematics instruction process-based, understandable and relevant to everyday life.

The investigative approach attempts to foster mathematical power by making mathematics instruction process-based, understandable or relevant to the everyday life of students. Past efforts to reform mathematics instruction have focused on only one or two of these aims, whereas the investigative approach accomplishes all three. By teaching content in a purposeful context, an inquiry-based fashion, and a meaningful manner, this approach promotes chilren's mathematical learning in an interesting, thought-provoking and comprehensible way. This teaching guide is designed to help teachers appreciate the need for the investigative approach and to provide practical advice on how to make this approach happen in the classroom. It not only dispenses information, but also serves as a catalyst for exploring, conjecturing about, discussing and contemplating the teaching and learning of mathematics.