PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Undergraduate students’ experiences in a developmental mathematics classroom
Page: 627
Understanding students’ perspectives about their mathematics classroom experience is important for supporting students’ learning. As part of a larger study, 15 students enrolled in enrichment sections of a developmental mathematics course were interviewed to explore students’ experiences and dispositions. We highlight areas that students described as helpful or not and the ways in which students’ framed themselves as having a “productive disposition” (National Research Council (NRC), 2001). Preliminary findings suggest students found activities most helpful when they thought that the activity might help them be successful on other activities and that they described themselves as having many characteristics of a productive disposition. A detailed analysis of these descriptions, however, uncovered narrow interpretations of “understanding” and “making sense” in mathematics