PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
Examining a Mathematician’s Goals and Beliefs about Course Handouts
Page: 1069
In this qualitative narrative study, we employed Schoenfeld’s theory of Resources, Orientations and Goals (ROGs) to analyze a mathematician’s beliefs and goals in creating handouts for his students. Some of the instructor’s primary goals in creating the handouts were: (1) to help students gain an intuition about Algebraic Topology, (2) to provide a resource for students to revisit the difficult material outside of class, and (3) to prompt students to complete exercises so that they could monitor their own mastery of the course content. As part of this study, one of the students in class took daily journals. These journal entries revealed that he appreciated the time and careful preparation that was necessary to create the handouts, particularly the pictures that the instructor drew in the margins to help students gain an intuition. However, one obstacle that the student faced was struggling to appreciate the instructor’s goal of expecting students to monitor their mastery of content outside of class time through completion of ungraded exercises in the handouts.