6533b855fe1ef96bd12afebc

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Running to keep up with the lecturer or gradual de-ritualization? Biology students’ engagement with construction and data interpretation graphing routines in mathematical modelling tasks

Elena NardiOlov ViirmanOlov Viirman

subject

Relation (database)Applied MathematicsInterpretation (philosophy)05 social sciencesAgency (philosophy)050301 educationData interpretationEducationTask (project management)Trace (semiology)Mathematics (miscellaneous)0502 economics and businessComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATIONMathematics educationRitualizationConstrual level theory0503 education050203 business & management

description

Abstract Through a commognitive lens, we examine twelve first-semester biology students’. engagement with graphing routines as they work in groups, during four sessions of Mathematical Modelling (MM). We trace the students’ meta-level learning, particularly as they fluctuate between deploying graphs for mere illustration of data and as sense-making tools. We account for student activity in relation to precedent events in their experiences of graphing and as fluid, if not always productive, interplay between ritualised and exploratory engagement with graph construction and interpretation routines. The students’ construal of the task situations is marked by efforts to keep up with lecturer expectations which allow for changing degrees of student agency but do not factor in the influence of precedent events. Our analysis has pedagogical implications for the way MM problems are formulated and also foregrounds the capacity of the commognitive framework to trace de-ritualization and meta-level learning in students’ MM activity.

10.1016/j.jmathb.2021.100858https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/79601/