PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Examining students’ procedural and conceptual understanding of eigenvectors and eigenvalues in the context of inquiry-oriented instruction
Page: 1146
This study examines students’ procedural and conceptual understanding as evidenced by theirwritten responses to two questions designed to assess aspects of their understanding ofeigenvalues and eigenvectors. This analysis draws on data taken from 126 students whoseinstructors taught using a particular inquiry-oriented instructional approach and 129 comparablestudents whose instructors did not use this instructional approach. In this proposal, we offerexamples of student responses that provide insight into their reasoning and summarize broadtrends observed in our quantitative analysis. In general, students in both groups performed betteron the procedural item than on the conceptual item. Additionally, the group of students who weretaught with the inquiry-oriented approach outperformed the group of students who were taughtusing other approaches.Key words: