PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Connecting research on students’ common misconceptions about tangent lines to instructors’ choice of graphical examples in a first semester calculus course
Page: 1024
Common misconceptions that students have about tangent lines are well documented in the research literature. This study seeks to understand the efforts that instructors make to address these common misconceptions in their classroom instruction. Specifically, we looked at video data from classroom sessions of five instructors when they covered the graphical representation of derivative. Language and gestures instructors used as well as the graphical examples they provided to the students were analyzed.