Category: Uncategorized

Steven Jones recently published an article titled “Design of virtual reality modules for multivariable calculus and an examination of student noticing within them.” in the Research in Mathematics Education. Steven has answered a few questions about this article below:  Who were your co-authors on this article? Nicholas Long and Jeremy Becnel at Stephen F Austin State University Who would you say is the target audience for this article? Undergraduate mathematics education researchers, undergraduate mathematics instructors, and mathematics education researchers on virtual reality. What is the big problem you hoped to address with this article? Multivariable calculus presents specific issues of visualizing 3-dimensional (and higher) mathematical objects. Traditional media of books and chalkboards are limited in being inherently 2-dimensional. This paper examined the design and usage of virtual reality modules for…

Congratulations to Grace Lam and Anna Christensen as they have been awarded the Outstanding Student Award from the Math Education department for Winter Semester 2023! Grace and Anna will be student teaching this semester and graduating in April.

Conversation with the new MTE editors, Mike Steele and Kate Johnson, as they share their vision for the journal. The podcast is available at https://mtepodcast.amte.net/40.

Steven Jones recently published an article titled “Examining Students’ Variational Reasoning in Differential Equations” in the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. Steven has answered a few questions about this article below:  Who were your co-authors on this article? George E. Kuster, Christopher Newport University Who would you say is the target audience for this article? Mathematics education researchers and undergraduate mathematics instructors What is the big problem you hoped to address with this article? Reasoning and modelling with differential equations requires significant cognitive effort and is not trivial to learn to do. We wanted to know what role variational reasoning played in students' understandings of differential equations. What are some of the key ideas in the article? 1. While students can think of a derivative as a rate of change or…

The following students were the winner from the Mathematics Education sessions of the College of Physical and Mathematical Science Student Research Conference that was held on March 5, 2022: Jennifer Canizales Navy Dixon Erika Crystal Hannah Vincent. Thanks to all the students who participated in the conference.

Steven Jones recently had a paper titled “Identifying graphical forms used by students in creating and interpreting graphs.” published in the conference proceedings for the PMENA conference. Steven has answered a few questions about this paper below:  Who were your co-authors on this paper? Jon-Marc Rodriguez Who would you say is the target audience for this paper? Secondary/tertiary mathematics education researchers What is the big problem you hoped to address with this paper? There is a substantial research literature on students' understanding of and reasoning with graphs. However, most of this work is on misconceptions and difficulties, and little work has been done on documenting the productive knowledge elements students do have that they can use in graphical activity. This paper was meant to relate a framework for identifying such…

Holly Walker received our Outstanding Student Award for Winter Semester 2022. She will be doing her student teaching winter semester and graduating in April 2022. We wish you the best!

Keith Leatham and Blake Peterson recently had a paper titled “Establishing student mathematical thinking as an object of class discussion” published in the conference proceedings for the Psychology of Mathematics Education – North America (PMENA) conference. Keith has answered a few questions about this paper below:  Who were your co-authors on this paper? Laura R. Van Zoest (Western Michigan University), Ben Freeburn (Western Michigan University), Blake E. Peterson (BYU), and Shari L. Stockero (Michigan Tech University) Who would you say is the target audience for this paper? Mathematics Education Researchers What are some of the main ideas you hope your audience will take from the article? A deeper understanding of the complexity and subtlety of establishing student mathematical thinking as an object of class discussion. What else would you like…

Blake Peterson and Keith Leatham recently published an article titled “Conceptualizing Important Facets of Teacher Responses to Student Mathematical Thinking” in the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. Blake has answered a few questions about this article below:  Who were your co-authors on this article? Laura Van Zoest, Shari Stockero, Annick Rougee, Ben Freeburn Who would you say is the target audience for this article? Researchers who study the practice of mathematics teachers. What is the big problem you hoped to address with this article? NCTM recommends that mathematics teachers should use student thinking as part of their class discussions but what does it look like to effectively do that. As a first step to studying how to productively use student thinking, we studied teachers initial responses…