Conference:
ECER 2008
Format:
Symposium Paper
Session Information
03 SES 09A, Mathematics Textbooks, Mathematical Tasks and Pupil Identity: An International Perspective
Symposium
Time:
2008-09-12
10:30-12:00
Room:
B2 216
Chair:
Birgit Pepin
Discussant:
Wilmad Kuiper
Contribution
It is expected that students at tertiary level work individually and some of this work depends on the use of a textbook. Because of this the textbook can be an important factor for the learning of mathematics. This study focussed on one particular calculus textbook used by the engineering students when they take a basic mathematic course.
There were two aims of this study: the first one was to examine the textbook concerning introduction and treatment of the concept of ‘derivative’ with respect to conceptual and procedural knowledge; the second was to investigate how students were using the textbook. The results show that the presentation of the concept is very formal and strongly depends on students’ previous knowledge, and the treatment of ‘derivative’ emphasises procedural fluency. It is not easy for students using the book to make connections between conceptual and procedural knowledge.
The engineering students have different “mathematical backgrounds” and some of them are not confident in terms of their mathematical competence. Many of them consider mathematics as “a collection of procedures” to be used in order to solve some typical questions given in the textbook or examination. The results of observations in the classroom and interviews show that the students use the textbook to a very low degree. Using the textbook they spend most their time studying examples and apply them to receive correct answer to procedural tasks. This is likely to have implications for students’ developing understandings of what mathematics is and what it means to learn mathematics.
References
...
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.