RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
The Cognitive Obstacles Associated with Structuring for Mathematization Undergraduates Encountered During Dynamic Modeling Tasks
Page: 510
Studies have described a number of blockages to mathematizing, the process of transforming a real-world situation into a mathematical model. Recently, researchers have documented four cognitive obstacles associated with those blockages in physics-based modeling tasks. We attempted to extend these findings to biological-based modeling tasks. However, we found it difficult to use the theoretical lens as described in the previous literature. This difficulty arose because the previous theoretical lens required the delineation of real-world objects and mathematical objects, a pursuit recently shown to be unattainable in some contexts. By examining students mathematization under a quantitative reasoning and symbolic forms lens, we were able to find two cognitive obstacles analogous to the ones found in previous research, confirming their existence with a different demographic of students and different task scenarios.