PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Creating opportunities for students to address misconceptions: Student engagement with a task from a reform-oriented calculus curriculum
Page: 495
Research shows that students learn best when working with their peers as this creates opportunities for students to challenge one another’s thinking, consequently building new knowledge. We will share analysis of three groups of calculus students engaging with an activity from a new reform-oriented calculus curriculum, which developed out of the philosophy that students working together promotes increased learning. Inspired by Gresalfi’s engagement framework (2013), we developed an engagement coding scheme that differentiates between weak, procedural, and conceptual engagement. Our analysis focuses on the opportunities that emerged for students to address misconceptions. Findings show that how groups engaged with the same task varied significantly and, although opportunities to address misconceptions emerged in all groups, misconceptions were most effectively addressed in the group where conceptual engagement was prevalent. We discuss the extent to which norms, learning dispositions, and the activity itself played a role in the outcomes we observed.