Impacting Students’ Practice of Mathematics, Especially at Critical Moments

Dev Sinha

Speaker

Details

We discuss a dozen years of experience in course development with an aim of changing students' perceptions of what mathematics is and what success in mathematics classes ought to entail. Key components are identifying important common student misunderstandings and designing activities, often in-class, to address those, and aiming for authenticity of student practice. We share ground-up (re)design of three courses: introduction to proofs, math for preservice elementary school teachers, and mathematical modeling in preparation for college algebra, the latter of which has very positive though small-population data which indicates some success. We end with discussion of the challenges presented to campuses in trying to strategically implement such practice-focussed courses.

Seminar Info