PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Exploring relationships between undergraduates’ plausible and productive reasoning and their success in solving mathematics problems
Page: 332
This study examines how the use of plausible and productive reasoning in mathematical problem solving (MPS) influences student performance on non-traditional problems. Data comes from ten individual, task-based interviews with College Algebra students. In general, students who demonstrated high use of plausible and productive reasoning had a higher percentage of correct answers on interview tasks than their peers. We propose reasons why a student may use plausible and productive reasoning and still arrive at an incorrect answer; we also consider how a student may use suboptimal reasoning and reach a correct answer.