PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
Quantitative reasoning and symbolization activity: Do individuals expect calculations and expressions to have quantitative significance?
Page: 449
This paper describes ways of thinking students employ when they choose to use calculations or produce algebraic expressions to respond to mathematical tasks and their expectations regarding the meanings of what they produce. My findings suggest that students’ reasoning in symbolization activity is often guided by perceptual features of tasks, such as the numbers explicitly given in prompts and key words students identify. I describe the construct “emergent symbolization” as a potentially productive way of thinking in symbolization activity based on synthesizing prior work and the results of this study. I close by making connections between similar work in analyzing students’ ways of thinking about graphs and discussing how my work contributes to the common instructional goal of promoting connections between representations.