Emergent modeling: discrete graphs to support the understanding of change and velocity

In this paper we focus on an instructional sequence that aims at supporting students in their learning of the basic principles of rate of change and velocity. The conjectured process of teaching and learning is supposed to ensure that the mathematical and physical concepts will be rooted in students’ understanding of everyday-life situations. Students’ inventions are supported by carefully planned activities and tools that fit their reasoning. The central design heuristic of the instructional sequence is emergent modeling. We created an educational setting in three tenth grade classrooms to investigate students’ learning with this sequence. The design research is carried out in order to contribute to a local instruction theory on calculus. Classroom events and computer activities are video-taped, group work is audio-taped and student materials are collected. Qualitative analyses show that with the emergent modeling approach, the basic principles of calculus can be developed from students’ reasoning on motion, when they are supported by discrete graphs.     

An updated conceptualization of the intuition construct for mathematics education research

To improve instruction, conduct communicable studies on student intuition, and provide an entry point for researchers interested in this area, the meaning of intuition in mathematics education needs to be addressed. This paper reviews 816 journal papers from top tier mathematics education journals to obtain an updated conceptualization of the intuition construct. Different research camps, such as a camp focused on instructional design that leverages learners’ primary intuitions in the classroom and a camp concerned with sources of errors through the lens of intuitive rules theory, emerged. A critical discussion of theoretical choices for intuition research will be followed by several directions for future research on intuition specific to university mathematics education.     

Local Instruction Theories as Means of Support for Teachers in Reform Mathematics Education

This article focuses on a form of instructional design that is deemed fitting for reform mathematics education. Reform mathematics education requires instruction that helps students in developing their current ways of reasoning into more sophisticated ways of mathematical reasoning. This implies that there has to be ample room for teachers to adjust their instruction to the students' thinking. But, the point of departure is that if justice is to be done to the input of the students and their ideas built on, a well-founded plan is needed. Design research on an instructional sequence on addition and subtraction up to 100 is taken as an instance to elucidate how the theory for realistic mathematics education (RME) can be used to develop a local instruction theory that can function as such a plan. Instead of offering an instructional sequence that “works,” the objective of design research is to offer teachers an empirically grounded theory on how a certain set of instructional activities can work. The example of addition and subtraction up to 100 is used to clarify how a local instruction theory informs teachers about learning goals, instructional activities, student thinking and learning, and the role of tools and imagery.     

Local Instruction Theories as Means of Support for Teachers in Reform Mathematics Education

This article focuses on a form of instructional design that is deemed fitting for reform mathematics education. Reform mathematics education requires instruction that helps students in developing their current ways of reasoning into more sophisticated ways of mathematical reasoning. This implies that there has to be ample room for teachers to adjust their instruction to the students' thinking. But, the point of departure is that if justice is to be done to the input of the students and their ideas built on, a well-founded plan is needed. Design research on an instructional sequence on addition and subtraction up to 100 is taken as an instance to elucidate how the theory for realistic mathematics education (RME) can be used to develop a local instruction theory that can function as such a plan. Instead of offering an instructional sequence that "works," the objective of design research is to offer teachers an empirically grounded theory on how a certain set of instructional activities can work. The example of addition and subtraction up to 100 is used to clarify how a local instruction theory informs teachers about learning goals, instructional activities, student thinking and learning, and the role of tools and imagery.     

Locating starting points in differential equations: a realistic mathematics education approach

The paper reports on ongoing developmental research efforts to adapt the instructional design perspective of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) to the learning and teaching of collegiate mathematics, using differential equations as a specific case. This report focuses on the RME design heuristic of guided reinvention as a means to locate a starting point for an instructional sequence for first-order differential equations and highlights the cyclical process instructional design and analysis of student learning. The instance of starting with a rate of change equation as an experientially real mathematical context is taken as a case for illustrating how university students might experience the creation of mathematical ideas. In particular, it is shown how three students came to reason conceptually about rate and in the process, develop their own informal Euler method for approximating solution functions to differential equations.     

Game Design as an Interactive Learning Environment for Fostering Students'' and Teachers'' Mathematical Inquiry

Many learning environments, computer-based or not, have been developed for either students or teachers alone to engage them in mathematical inquiry. While some headway has been made in both directions, few efforts have concentrated on creating learning environments that bring both teachers and students together in their teaching and learning. In the following paper, we propose game design as such a learning environment for students and teachers to build on and challenge their existing understandings of mathematics, engage in relevant and meaningful learning contexts, and develop connections among their mathematical ideas and their real world contexts. To examine the potential of this approach, we conducted and analyzed two studies: Study I focused on a team of four elementary school students designing games to teach fractions to younger students, Study II focused on teams of pre-service teachers engaged in the same task. We analyzed the various games designed by the different teams to understand how teachers and students conceptualize the task of creating virtual game learning environment for others, in which ways they integrate their understanding of fractions and develop notions about students' thinking in fractions, and how conceptual design tools can provide a common platform to develop meaningful fraction contexts. In our analysis, we found that most teachers and students, when left to their own devices, create instructional games to teach fractions that incorporate little of their knowledge. We found that when we provided teachers and students with conceptual design tools such as game screens and design directives that facilitated an integration of content and game context, the games as well as teachers' and students' thinking increased in their sophistication. In the discussion, we elaborate on how the design activities helped to integrate rarely used informal knowledge of students and teachers, how the conceptual design tools improved the instructional design process, and how students and teachers benefit in their mathematical inquiry from each others' perspectives. In the outlook, we discuss features for computational design learning environments. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A quadratic growth learning trajectory

This paper introduces a quadratic growth learning trajectory, a series of transitions in students’ ways of thinking (WoT) and ways of understanding (WoU) quadratic growth in response to instructional supports emphasizing change in linked quantities. We studied middle grade (ages 12–13) students’ conceptions during a small-scale teaching experiment aimed at fostering an understanding of quadratic growth as phenomenon of constantly-changing rate of change. We elaborate the duality, necessity, repeated reasoning framework, and methods of creating learning trajectories. We report five WoT: Variation, Early Coordinated Change, Explicitly Quantified Coordinated Change, Dependency Relations of Change, and Correspondence. We also articulate instructional supports that engendered transitions across these WoT: teacher moves, norms, and task design features. Our integration of instructional supports and transitions in students’ WoT extend current research on quadratic function. A visual metaphor is leveraged to discuss the role of learning trajectories research in unifying research on teaching and learning.     

Biomedical Engineering and Cognitive Science as the Basis for Secondary Science Curriculum Development: A Three Year Study

This study reports on a multiyear effort to create and evaluate cognitive‐based curricular materials for secondary school science classrooms. A team of secondary teachers, educational researchers, and academic biomedical engineers developed a series of curriculum units that are based in biomedical engineering for secondary level students in physics and advanced biology classes. These units made use of an instructional design based upon recent cognitive science research called the Legacy Cycle. Over a 3‐year period, comparison of student knowledge on written questions related to central concepts in physics and/or biology generally favored students who had worked with the experimental materials over students in control classrooms. In addition, experimental students were better able to solve applications type problems, as well as unit‐specific near transfer problems.     

How Emergent Models May Foster the Constitution of Formal Mathematics

This article deals with the role that so-called emergent models can play in the process of constituting formal mathematics. The underlying philosophy is that formal mathematics is something that is, or should be, constituted by the students themselves. In the instructional design theory for realistic mathematics education, models always have been employed to foster a process in which formal mathematics is reinvented by the students themselves. This article describes how the use of models became more and more explicated over time and developed into the notion of emergent models. The design of an instructional sequence, which deals with flexible mental computation strategies for addition and subtraction up to 100, is taken as an instance for elaborating what is meant by emergent models and what role they play in fostering the constitution of formal mathematics. The analysis shows that there are 3 interrelated processes. First. at a more holistic level, there is a global transition in which "the model" initially emerges as a model of informal mathematical activity and then gradually develops into a model for more formal mathematical reasoning. Second, the transition from "model of" to "model for" involves the constitution of anew mathematical reality that can be denoted formal in relation to the original starting points of the students. Third, in the series of instructional activities, there is not 1 model, but the model actually is shaped as a series of signs, in which each new sign comes to signify activity with a previous sign in a chain of signification.     

How Emergent Models May Foster the Constitution of Formal Mathematics

This article deals with the role that so-called emergent models can play in the process of constituting formal mathematics. The underlying philosophy is that formal mathematics is something that is, or should be, constituted by the students themselves. In the instructional design theory for realistic mathematics education, models always have been employed to foster a process in which formal mathematics is reinvented by the students themselves. This article describes how the use of models became more and more explicated over time and developed into the notion of emergent models. The design of an instructional sequence, which deals with flexible mental computation strategies for addition and subtraction up to 100, is taken as an instance for elaborating what is meant by emergent models and what role they play in fostering the constitution of formal mathematics. The analysis shows that there are 3 interrelated processes. First. at a more holistic level, there is a global transition in which “the model” initially emerges as a model of informal mathematical activity and then gradually develops into a model for more formal mathematical reasoning. Second, the transition from “model of” to “model for” involves the constitution of anew mathematical reality that can be denoted formal in relation to the original starting points of the students. Third, in the series of instructional activities, there is not 1 model, but the model actually is shaped as a series of signs, in which each new sign comes to signify activity with a previous sign in a chain of signification.     

Reinventing solutions to systems of linear differential equations: A case of emergent models involving analytic expressions

An enduring challenge in mathematics education is to create learning environments in which students generate, refine, and extend their intuitive and informal ways of reasoning to more sophisticated and formal ways of reasoning. Pressing concerns for research, therefore, are to detail students’ progressively sophisticated ways of reasoning and instructional design heuristics that can facilitate this process. In this article we analyze the case of student reasoning with analytic expressions as they reinvent solutions to systems of two differential equations. The significance of this work is twofold: it includes an elaboration of the Realistic Mathematics Education instructional design heuristic of emergent models to the undergraduate setting in which symbolic expressions play a prominent role, and it offers teachers insight into student thinking by highlighting qualitatively different ways that students reason proportionally in relation to this instructional design heuristic.     

基于“以学为中心”的数列极限教学设计研究

本文选取数列极限的定义这一部分内容,基于“以学为中心”教学理念介绍如何设计数列极限定义的教学过程,从九个环节进行设计旨在使学生更好的理解掌握数列极限的本质和内涵,达到以学为中心的教学目标.     

Relationships between students’ learning and their participation during enactment of middle school algebra tasks

This study examines a sequence of four middle school algebra tasks through their enactment in three teachers’ classrooms. The analysis centers on the cognitive demand—the kinds of thinking processes entailed in solving the task—and the participatory demand—the kinds of verbal contributions expected of students—of the task as written in the instructional materials, as set up by the three teachers, and as discussed by the teachers and their students. Relationships between the nature of the task enactments and students’ performance on a pre- and post-test are explored. Findings include the fact that the enacted tasks differed from the written tasks with regard to both the cognitive demand and the participatory demand, which related to students’ lack of success on the post-test. Specifically, cognitive demand declined in the enacted curriculum at different points for different classes, and the participatory demand during enactment tended to involve isolated mathematical terms rather than students verbally expressing mathematical relations.     

Conceptual learning in a principled design problem solving environment

To what extent can instructional design be based on principles for instilling a culture of problem solving and conceptual learning? This is the main focus of the study described in this paper, in which third grade students participated in a one-year course designed to foster problem solving and mathematical reasoning. The design relied on five principles: (a) encouragement to produce multiple solutions; (b) creating collaborative situations; (c) socio-cognitive conflicts; (d) providing tools for checking hypotheses; and (e) inviting students to reflect on solutions. We describe how a problem solving task designed according to the above principles, promoted students' understanding of the area concept. We show that the design afforded the surfacing of multiple solutions and justifications in various modalities (including gestures) and initiated peer argumentation, leading to deep learning of the area concept.     

A learning trajectory for university students regarding the concept of vector

This paper presents and evaluates a hypothetical learning trajectory by which students bridge the transition from elementary to university-level instruction regarding the concept of vector. The trajectory consists of an instructional sequence of five tasks and begins with a problem in context. Each task is carried out with the support of a Virtual Interactive Didactic Scenario, accompanied by exploration and guided learning sheets, in which the problem is introduced through the simulation of the movement of a robotic arm. This proposal was implemented at the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic using various digital media. Two teaching experiments were carried out with engineering students at a Mexican public university. We present the hypothetical learning trajectory that should be followed toward solving the task, and contrast it in each case with the students’ actual learning trajectory. The results show that more than 70 % of the students successfully transitioned from the geometrical vector representation of elementary physics to the algebraic one.     

A Modeling Perspective on Interpreting Rates of Change in Context

Functions provide powerful tools for describing change, but research has shown that students find difficulty in using functions to create and interpret models of changing phenomena. In this study, we drew on a models and modeling perspective to design an instructional approach to develop students’ abilities to describe and interpret rates of change in the context of exponential decay. In this article, we elaborate the characteristics of the model development sequence and we examine how students interpreted and described non-constant rates of change in context. We provide evidence for how a focus on the context made visible students’ reasoning about rates of change, including difficulties related to the use of language when describing changes in the negative direction. We argue that context and the use of language, forefronted in a modeling approach, should play an important role in supporting the development of students’ reasoning about changing phenomena.     

Teaching Algebraic Expressions to Young Students: The Three‐day Journey of “a+ 2”

This classroom scholarship report is based on the teaching experience using Davydov's mathematics curriculum, which was developed in the former Soviet Union. While “from arithmetic to algebra” is the normally accepted instructional sequence in school mathematics, Davydov's curriculum is laid out “from algebra to arithmetic,” focusing on algebraic thinking from the very beginning of the elementary grades. The purpose of this report is not to provide a definitive conclusion about which curriculum or sequence is better nor to address which instructional strategy is right in all circumstances. Rather, it is to explore how primary grade students develop their own conceptual understanding while confronting difficulties met within a specific context. This report provides actual classroom episodes from working with a group of first graders and describes dynamic interactions between the teacher and children while they discuss the use of algebraic expressions and understand the meaning behind them.     

Developing shift problems to foster geometrical proof and understanding

Meaningful learning of formal mathematics in regular classrooms remains a problem in mathematics education. Research shows that instructional approaches in which students work collaboratively on tasks that are tailored to problem solving and reflection can improve students’ learning in experimental classrooms. However, these sequences involve often carefully constructed reinvention route, which do not fit the needs of teachers and students working from conventional curriculum materials. To help to narrow this gap, we developed an intervention—‘shift problem lessons’. The aim of this article is to discuss the design of shift problems and to analyze learning processes occurring when students are working on the tasks. Specifically, we discuss three paradigmatic episodes based on data from a teaching experiment in geometrical proof. The episodes show that is possible to create a micro-learning ecology where regular students are seriously involved in mathematical discussions, ground their mathematical understanding and strengthen their relational framework.     

Effective collaboration in the productive failure process

Productive failure is a learning design that encompasses problem solving prior to instruction and the learning that occurs during and after this process. In the mathematics education literature, there is a need for analyses of students’ interactions that occur as they collaborate during the productive failure process. In this paper, we contribute to this area by taking a closer look at students’ interactions that characterize an effective productive failure process. In analyzing video footage of two different groups of students working on invention tasks in a flipped mathematics classroom, we observed that the productive failure process seemed to work best in groups of students among whom the instructional design evoked students’ intellectual need and curiosity. These students also developed a set routine for solving problems whose solutions are difficult to find without prior direct instruction on the topic, which proved valuable on follow-up in-class and posttest problems.     

Challenges of maintaining cognitive demand during the limit lessons: understanding one mathematician’s class practices

In this study, we examined five limit lessons using Mathematical Tasks Framework to understand students’ opportunities to learn cognitively challenging tasks and maintain cognitive demand during limit lessons. Our analysis of Dr A’s five lessons shows that students rarely had opportunities to maintain or increase cognitive demand. There are two main factors that shaped her instructional practices, students and time. These two factors greatly influenced how she selects and implements limit tasks in her classes. To serve her students’ needs of knowing more rules, formulas and procedures, she selected and discussed those simple tasks a lot. Although Dr A thinks challenging tasks and asking demanding questions can be potentially good instructional practices, she thinks these instructional practices would not serve her students well. With these factors, we made possible recommendations to have more student-centred teaching.