PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2014
Denver, Colorado
Differentiated Student Thinking While Solving A Distance Vs. Time Graph Problem
Page: 975
This study probes the thinking of students at different stages: a) secondary students taking calculus, b) college students taking calculus, and c) college students pursuing teacher certification taking a mathematics course other than calculus. The study asks: 1) what is the nature of student thinking when solving a graph problem, and 2) do students with different levels of mathematical experience solve a graph problem differently? A pilot investigation reveals many students estimate answers, even if they had studied calculus. For the current study, data will be collected during Fall, 2013. Oral interviews will be conducted with a subset of the participants and coded via Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Dick, 2005). This work follows physics education (McDermott, Rosenquist & van Zee, 1987; Thornton & Sokoloff, 1990; Kim & Kim, 2005), and mathematics education (Chiu, Kessel, Moschkovich & Munch-Nunez, 2001; Moschkovich, 1996) that describe difficulties students have with graph interpretation.