Search results for "Overview"
showing 8 items of 158 documents
Who Becomes U.S. Mathematics Teachers: A Longitudinal Analysis of First-time Praxis® II Mathematics Content Knowledge Examinees
2018
International audience; The U.S. uses the Praxis® tests to measure academic skills and the subject-specific content knowledge needed to be a teacher. This study examined Praxis® Mathematics Content Knowledge scores from 2006 to 2016 to describe patterns in who are becoming certified to teach mathematics in the country. Longitudinal analyses were used to discern patterns in the demographics of examinees and trends in exam performance across several demographic characteristics. The results reveal substantial differences in performance and pass rates between examinees of different genders, races, undergraduate majors, undergraduate GPAs, and census regions. From our analyses, we suggest severa…
From single to multi-variable Calculus: a transition?
2018
International audience; We recently used the notion of praxeology from the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic to model the knowledge that is necessary for students to learn in order to succeed in an undergraduate multivariable Calculus course. We considered the presence and absence of elements of the knowledge to be taught, as proposed by curricular documents, in the knowledge to be learned, as indicated by final exams. Our results indicate that the mathematical activities expected of students at this level align with the activities observed in differential and integral Calculus, where exercise-driven assessments set students' work mainly in the recognition of types of tasks and recolle…
A study of transitions in an undergraduate mathematics program
2018
International audience; In this paper, we introduce an in-progress study of the transitions students face as they advance in their mathematics courses. Previous work has discussed the changes that occur in the transition from high school to university. With regards to the knowledge students are expected to learn, however, significant similarities have been noted: to do well in introductory university courses, students can learn to solve a particular subset of tasks through routinized techniques, with limited awareness of the supporting mathematical theory. In contrast, students in advanced courses are required to work with and on that theory. The first stage of our project aims to better un…
Fostering Heuristic Strategies in Mathematics Teacher Education
2018
International audience; The “double discontinuity” stated by Felix Klein 1908 is still relevant in the mathematics teacher education at German universities. We are developing a course approach, which is intended to bridge the double discontinuity in a didactic dimension. We offer additional learning opportunities for teacher students, which are characterized by clarifications of mathematical methods that are fundamental to the regular lecture contents. We focus especially on reflections on heuristic strategies, which are the core part of mathematical methods according to George Pólya. Feedback shows that students consider our approach as helpful in the transition from school to university.
Characteristics of participation - A mathematician and a mathematics educator collaborating on a developmental research project
2018
International audience; In this paper, a developmental research project involving offering mathematical modelling (MM) activities to university biology students is presented, and a particular aspect is studied, namely the project as a collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators. The aim of the paper is to investigate what characterizes their participation in the project, and how the characteristics of the project and its development might influence this participation. Interview data as well as observation data from the MM sessions are analysed, and findings show that the mathematics educator served as a broker influencing the practice of the mathematician. It is hoped tha…
Programming in mathematics teacher education – a collaborative teaching approach
2018
International audience
Students' problems in the identification of subspaces in Linear Algebra
2018
International audience; The goal of the study presented in this paper is the investigation of students' problems with exercises concerning central topics of linear algebra courses at university level. We present the results of our analysis of students' work on an exercise about subspaces of . We evaluated the written solutions of the task as well as transcripts based on videos taken of student groups working on the problem. We identified and classified descriptions of vector spaces and subspaces that varied widely and demonstrated highly different skills in working with geometric or formal algebraic objects. We analyzed how far students could progress in a complex reasoning process, and ide…
Does using a visual-representation tool foster students’ ability to identify forces and construct free-body diagrams?
2013
Earlier research has shown that after physics instruction, many students have difficulties with the force concept, and with constructing free-body diagrams (FBDs). It has been suggested that treating forces as interactions could help students to identify forces as well as to construct the correct FBDs. While there is evidence that identifying interactions helps students in quantitative problem solving, there is no previous research investigating the effect of a visual-representation tool—an interaction diagram (ID)—on students’ ability to identify forces, and to construct the correct FBDs.We present an empirical study conducted in 11 Finnish high schools on students (n ¼ 335, aged 16) takin…