PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 1)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Students’ Meanings for Rate in Two and Three Dimensions
Page: 1-410
This paper describes two first-semester calculus students’ meanings for rate of change, and how these meanings shaped their conversations and interpretations of rate in three dimensions. I present the theoretical structure of the teaching experiment in which the two students participated, use excerpts from the teaching experiment to illustrate the development of their ways of understanding, and present a retrospective analysis that characterizes the meanings I believed the students possessed. I conclude by discussing the need to use results from literature about generalization and abstraction to inform the study of student thinking in multivariable calculus.