PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
It’s about time: How instructors and students experience time constraints in calculus I
Page: 486
The goal of this research is to better understand the relationship between how quickly or deeply Calculus material is covered and how this is related to students’ instructional experience and their persistence in a STEM major. To do so, we analyze data coming from a large national survey of Calculus I programs. Specifically, we first compare students’ views of pacing to their instructor’s views, resulting in four classifications of students. We then investigate various characteristics of these students, including: their institution type, their instructor type, their reported instruction, their mathematics beliefs, and their Calculus II intentions. Our findings suggest two important ways that pressure to cover material impacts Calculus I students and their instructors. First, when instructors feel pressure to cover material, student-centered teaching practices are often dropped. Second, feeling rushed to cover difficult material is a factor in losing STEM intending students.