RUME 25
2023
Omaha, Nebraska
Teaching Assistants’ Use of Students’ Work When Planning How to Address Misconceptions Inferred from It
Page: 127
Given the crucial role that the graduate teaching assistants (TAs) play in undergraduate mathematics education, this study investigated how TAs interpret students’ work and plan to address students’ work in teaching. We analyzed TAs’ interpretations and plans according to approaches towards addressing students’ misconceptions discussed in the literature: viewing them as simply incorrect regardless of students’ thinking behind them, viewing them as a reflection of students’ flawed ideas to be confronted and replaced, and viewing them as resources for future learning. Our analysis shows that while TAs’ interpretations were often sufficiently rich to support using student misconceptions as resources for future learning, none of their plans used them in this way. Rather, most TAs’ plans were aligned with the confront-and-replace approach. Our results suggest that professional development could be designed to help TAs convert their rich interpretations into plans for using student misconceptions as resources for future learning.