PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
An explicit method for teaching generalization to pre-service teachers using computer programming
Page: 1449
As colleagues in a Mathematics/Computer Science department, we found that many of ourundergraduates were not able to participate successfully in the full range of STEM courseofferings. In response to this need, we developed a strategy for explicit instruction inmathematical generalization. Our instructional design is grounded in a theory of mathematicallearning that uses computer programming to induce students to build the mental frameworksneeded for understanding a math concept. The design includes writing mini programs to explorea mathematical concept, finding general expressions in the code, making conjectures about therelationships among general expressions, and writing logical arguments for the conjectures. Weshare results from a study of 18 undergraduate math/secondary education majors. Our resultsindicate most pre-service teachers showed improvement in their level of abstraction over theconcept of direct variation.Key words: