The Author: Susan Gerofsky earned her Ph.D. in mathematics education from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and her M.A. in applied linguistics from the University of Durham, England. Dr. Gerofsky teaches at an alternative school in Vancouver and at Simon Fraser University.

«Susan Gerofsky’s three-pronged inquiry into word problems offers a sophisticated and powerful analysis of these enduring cultural artifacts of mathematics teaching and learning. Readers will gain both in terms of the what and the why of these compact pedagogic devices and in terms of how to implement a linguistic-pragmatic perspective on mathematics education research – one which is gaining significantly in explanatory potential. Gerofsky’s book deserves to be very widely read and re-read.» (David Pimm, Professor, Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Canada)«Susan Gerofsky’s delightful and insightful book should be read by all teachers of mathematics, and would also be of interest to almost anyone interested in engaging students in learning. She has taken as her subject the unlikely topic of word problems in mathematics and has unearthed a fascinating range of pedagogical richness. As a non-math person, I found the book fascinating, always instructive and entertaining. She treats the word problems as a kind of literary genre, and examines their history – going back at least 4,000 years – and their varied current uses. … In Gerofsky’s concluding sections, she gives a number of practical suggestions for improving the use of word problems and the means to reconceive the genre. This is a profound, clear, and enjoyable book. It isn’t often that one can recommend a study of math teaching as continually entertaining as well as practically valuable.» (Kieran Egan, Canada Research Chair in Education, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University)«In this insightful and cross-disciplinary examination of word problems, Susan Gerofsky makes an important and timely contribution to discussions of school mathematics through a provocative critique of such notions as meaningfulness and context. She soundly demonstrates that much of the rhetoric and many of the practices that surround such terms represent reformulation, not reform, of traditional emphases.» (Brent Davis, Canada Research Chair in Mathematics Education and the Ecology of Learning, Department of Secondary Education, University of Alberta, Canada)