PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Graphs as objects: Analysis of the mathematical resources used by biochemistry students to reason about enzyme kinetics
Page: 1010
Interpreting graphs and drawing conclusions from data are important skills for students across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Here we describe a study that seeks to better understand how students reason about graphs in the context of enzyme kinetics, a topic that is underrepresented in the literature. Using semi-structured interviews and a think-aloud protocol, our qualitative study investigated the reasoning of 14 students enrolled in a second-year biochemistry course. During the interviews students were provided a typical enzyme kinetics graph and asked probing questions to make their reasoning more explicit. Findings focus on students’ mathematical reasoning, with analysis indicating students tended to focus on surface features when describing related equations and graphs, which limited their understanding of the chemical phenomena being modeled.