PROCEEDINGS OF THE 19TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2016
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Student problem solving in the context of volumes of revolution
Page: 554
The literature on problem solving indicates that focusing on strategies for specific types of problems may be more beneficial than seeking to determine grand, general problem solving strategies that work across large domains. Given this guideline, we seek to understand and map out different strategies students’ used in the specific context of volumes of revolution problems from calculus. Our study demonstrates the complex nature of solving volumes of revolution problems based on the multitude of diverse paths the students in our study took to achieve the desired “epistemic form” of an integral expression for a given volume problem. While the large- grained, overarching strategy for these students did not differ much, the complexity came in how the student carried out each step in their overall strategy.