It is Time to Think! Investigating the Impact of Reasoning Time in Precalculus

Date

2022-04

Authors

Buber, Zafer

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Abstract

College-level mathematics courses have always been a gatekeeper for students. High attrition rates in these courses point out a very serious issue. Research has identified various factors contributing to these high attrition rates. To various studies, one of these factors has been observed to be fast-paced instruction in college-level mathematics courses. Also, the research underlines that students who are exposed to fast-paced instruction without conceptual understanding are more likely to drop out. This study focuses on the instructional time and precalculus achievement relationship. More specifically, we investigate how the private reasoning time provided explicitly impacts students’ performance and achievement in college precalculus classes. This study aims to provide college students with more private reasoning time during the instruction and slow down the pace of the instruction. With this purpose in mind, we ask the following research questions: What is the impact of private reasoning time during the instruction on college students’ precalculus achievement? What is the optimal waiting time after students are given private reasoning time in precalculus classes? Students will be provided with a few explicit private reasoning time intervals from 30 sec to 1 min in precalculus classes. During these time intervals, students will be given some tasks designed to support their conceptual transitioning and some guiding questions that are supposed to help students reason about the mathematical concept. Each student is supposed to reason individually first. Then, around their individual thoughts, the instruction is supposed to go on. Students will be provided with a few explicit private reasoning time intervals from 30 sec to 1 min in precalculus classes. During these time intervals, students will be given some tasks designed to support their conceptual transitioning and some guiding questions that are supposed to help students reason about the mathematical concept. Each student is supposed to reason individually first. Then, around their individual thoughts, the instruction is supposed to go on. We will measure the impact of the planned intervention by using pre and post-design tools. Additionally, we will analyze semi-structured interviews with some students before and after the intervention to capture the change in their reasoning attitudes. Due to the highly complex nature of teaching/learning activities, we are not sure to what degree increasing reasoning time might improve the learning of precalculus concepts. However, we conjecture that slowing down the precalculus instruction, together with guiding questions and appropriate tasks, will help students with having: more active learning opportunities more interaction with the instructor more instructors' noticing the students' struggles more feedback from the instructor less math anxiety better achievement Based on the initial observations and the expected results, we hope that this study will improve the teaching/learning of precalculus, especially for the students who need more time to think during the instruction.

Description

Keywords

mathematics instruction, higher education, STEM, curriculum

Citation

Buber, Z. (2022). It's is time to think! Investigating the impact of reasoning time in precalculus. Poster presented at the International Research Conference for Graduate Students, San Marcos, Texas.

Rights

Rights Holder

Rights License

Rights URI