Search results for "Mathematics instruction"
showing 10 items of 30 documents
Unsupervised quantitative methods to analyze student reasoning lines: Theoretical aspects and examples
2019
[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Quantitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] A relevant aim of research in education is to find and study the reasoning lines that students deploy when dealing with problematic situations. This can be done through an analysis of the answers students give to a questionnaire. In this paper, we discuss some methodological aspects involved in the quantitative analysis of a questionnaire by means of two different clustering methods, a hierarchical one and a nonhierarchical one. We start from the coding procedures needed to obtain analyzable data from the questionnaire and from a definition of a correlation coefficient suitable for measuri…
The Calculator Debate
2016
The ‘calculator debate’ refers to an (often heated) exchange of ideas, on the ‘proper’ use of specific forms of hand-held technology in mathematics instruction and the assessment of learning, that has been ongoing for decades. This chapter considers issues in this debate in three sections. The first section positions ‘the calculator’ within ‘portable hand-held computational technology’ and reviews calculator use, the research literature on the use of the calculator and the ‘calculator debate’ itself. The second section considers the calculator with regard to Wertsch’s (Mind as action, Oxford, England, 1998) ten properties of mediated action. The last section speculates on a possible future …
Critical alignment in inquiry-based practice in developing mathematics teaching
2013
Published version of an article in the journal: Educational Studies in Mathematics. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10649-013-9489-z This paper reports a case study from a mathematics teaching developmental research project. The theoretical foundation for the research comprises communities of inquiry and critical alignment, with which the developmental methodology has a particular synergy. This synergy is the main focus of the paper. The paper elaborates theoretical and methodological antecedents of the project and traces these through a case study of developments in the practices of one upper secondary school team and a group of university didacticians (mat…
Mathematical skills in undergraduate students. A ten-year survey of a Plant Physiology course
2012
In the health and life sciences, as well as in other scientific disciplines, problem solving depends on mathematical skills. However, significant deficiencies are commonly found in this regard in undergraduate students. In an attempt to understand the underlying causes and to improve students' performance, this paper reports a ten-year survey (2000-2010) on mathematical skills of undergraduate Spanish students enrolled in a Plant Physiology course, based on data from tests performed throughout this time period. The results show that the percentage of correct answers decreases for questions requiring some mathematical skills, particularly those needing some calculations. Interestingly, perce…
The Raising Factor, That Great Unknown. A Guided Activity for Undergraduate Students
2020
In the first years of their economics degree programs, students will face many problems successfully dealing with a range of subjects with quantitative content. Specifically, in the field of statistics, difficulties to reach some basic academic achievements have been observed. Hence, a continuing challenge for statistics teachers is how to make this subject more appealing for students through the design and implementation of new teaching methodologies. The latter tend to follow two main approaches. On the one hand, it is useful for the learning process to propose practical activities that can connect theoretical concepts with real applications in the economic context. On the other hand, we …
Student teachers’ types of probing questions in inquiry-based mathematics teaching with and without GeoGebra
2017
Previous studies have produced several typologies of teacher questions in mathematics. Probing questions that ask students to explain are often included in the types of questions. However, only rare studies have created subtypes for probing questions or investigated how questioning differs depending on whether technology is used or not. The aims of this study are to elaborate on different ways of asking students to give explanations in inquiry-based mathematics teaching and to investigate whether questioning in GeoGebra lessons differs from questioning in other lessons. Data was collected by video recording 29 Finnish mathematics student teachers’ lessons in secondary and upper secondary sc…
Approach to mathematics in textbooks at tertiary level – exploring authors’ views about their texts
2012
The aim of this article is to present and discuss some results from an inquiry into mathematics textbooks authors’ visions about their texts and approaches they choose when new concepts are introduced. Authors’ responses are discussed in relation to results about students’ difficulties with approaching calculus reported by previous research. A questionnaire has been designed and sent to seven authors of the most used calculus textbooks in Norway and four authors have responded. The responses show that the authors mainly view teaching in terms of transmission so they focus mainly on getting the mathematical content correct and ‘clear’. The dominant view is that the textbook is intended to he…
Parental Involvement in Math Homework: Links to Children’s Performance and Motivation
2017
The present study examined the longitudinal associations between children’s perceptions of parental involvement in math homework (control and support) and their math performance and motivation (taskpersistent homework behavior and math self-concept). Children (n = 512) reported their perceptions concerning parental involvement in sixthgrade math homework. In grades 3 and 6, children completed math tests, evaluated own math self-concept, and their mothers (n = 420) evaluated task persistence during homework. The results showed that low selfconcept in math predicted increased parental control, which in turn related to low math performance, task persistence, and math selfconcept. Second, perce…
Emulating Human Supervision in an Intelligent Tutoring System for Arithmetical Problem Solving
2014
This paper presents an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) for the learning of arithmetical problem solving. This is based on an analysis of a) the cognitive processes that take place during problem solving; and b) the usual tasks performed by a human when supervising a student in a one-to-one tutoring situation. The ITS is able to identify the solving strategy that the student is following and offer adaptive feedback that takes into account both the problem's constraints and the decisions previously made by the user. An observational study shows the ITS's accuracy at emulating expert human supervision, and a randomized experiment reveals that the ITS significantly improves students' learning…
Revista electrónica de investigación y evaluación educativa
2012
El objetivo de este trabajo es acercar al lector la actualidad del debate sobre las dificultades específicas de aprendizaje. La barrera que impone la literatura científica en inglés hace que profesionales y estudiantes universitarios se pierdan los apasionantes avances sobre esta categoría diagnóstica que tan polémica trayectoria ha tenido desde su nacimiento formal. Presentamos las definiciones de las dificultades de aprendizaje que han estado vigentes hasta la primera década del siglo XXI, las nuevas definiciones y discutimos dos características de la historia de las definiciones en este campo. Concluimos con las exigencias que plantean las nuevas formulaciones. The purpose of this articl…