PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Instructors’ pedagogical decisions and mathematical meaning-related goals
Page: 129
There are differing senses of meaning in mathematics education focusing either on mathematical understanding or on relevance. Various pedagogical practices exist in mathematics education, each with its own goals and associated challenges of implementation though the relationship between pedagogical goals and differing senses of meaning has not been explored extensively. Using pre-existing survey data on calculus instructors’ pedagogy, we used multiple regression to determine the effect of differing pedagogical decisions aligned with the “meaning of” or “meaning for” mathematics on instructors’ perceived pressure to cover course content. The results of our overall test were statistically significant. In particular, we found instructors’ focus on the meaning for mathematics had a statistically significant effect on decreasing instructors’ stress to cover material. Implications and further areas of study follow.