The second teacher, Ms. Reese, was confident in her teaching. Prior to the study,
she had taught algebra to seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students for approximately 10 years. Ms. Reese reported that her high-school classes had focused on “traditional mathematics” and algorithms, had rarely used manipulatives, and had included drawn pictures only occasionally to introduce a topic or when there was confusion. Ms. Reese was in her second year of CMP implementation, but at the time of the study was teaching Bits and Pieces II for the first time. Izsak, Tillema, ´ & Tunc¸-Pekkan (2008) described Ms. Reese in greater detail.