PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Scaling Up Reinvention: Developing a Framework for Instructor Roles in the Classroom
Page: 2-594
Studies have shown that students have difficulty with the concept of limit, especially when reasoning about formal limit definitions. We conducted a five-day teaching experiment (TE) in a second semester calculus classroom in which students were asked to reinvent a formal sequence convergence definition. Oehrtman et al. (2011) detailed how pairs of students reinvented sequence convergence definitions but did not attempt the same instructional heuristic in the classroom. Our analysis focused on the instructor prompts and the TE students' subsequent group discussion through their use of key words and visuals in revising their definition. An interview with the instructor was conducted to investigate his intention of using specific prompts and his thinking about the TE group's choice of words and visuals. In our preliminary analysis, we found that the roles of the instructor were extended beyond those roles previously reported as roles for facilitators with pairs of students.