We conducted a descriptive study among first-year engineering students at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. We analyzed students' errors regarding necessary prior knowledge in a calculus A exam. We found that the stage of the solution in which prior knowledge is required impacts the importance of prior knowledge. We also found that many…

In this study, the conceptualizations used by prospective middle school mathematics teachers when defining, representing, and exemplifying the slope concept and relating it with other mathematical situations were examined. Participants' conceptualizations were identified by Nagle, C., Moore-Russo, D., Viglietti, J., & Martin, K. [(2013).…

This paper provides some insights into the use of example-generating tasks in the design of a technology-rich learning environment to enhance students' mathematical thinking. The paper reports on an early stage of a design-based research project concerning the design of tasks and associated feedback utilising the affordances provided by a combined…

This paper reports changes in the extent to which a group of Year 11 students used a Computer Algebra System (CAS), pen-and-paper (P&P), or a combination of both, when solving routine problems across seven months in four different topics. Comparing the frequency of CAS use across topics shows students made greater use of CAS in the topics of…

Many students do not have a deep understanding of slope. This paper defines what a deep understanding of slope is in terms of mathematics-education theory. The various factors which help explain why such a deep understanding is difficult to acquire are then discussed. These factors include the following: the different representations for slope;…

The goal of the paper is to pay attention to some important techniques and approaches including adequate designations as a tool for unambiguous understanding and a key to success in solving problems, vivid visual images as a mnemonic techniques, and special formulas as a universal tool for solving typical problems, when teaching medical students…

While the number of studies of flipped classrooms has increased, they have primarily addressed the efficacy of using such an approach on student outcomes, often failing to account for the classroom activities and learning theories used to design the curriculum. This study begins to fill this gap in the literature by uniting the at-home video and…

Research shows that teachers influence students' attitudes towards; performance in; and perceptions of a subject. Hence, the need to improve the teaching and learning of many curricular subjects has been well documented for many years. This paper focusses on efforts made to develop competence among out-of-field teachers of mathematics and…

This study aims to explore a phenomenon of a one-off manifestation of mathematical creativity on the part of a student, against the background of her normative and not especially creative behavior--a flash of creativity. We seek to elaborate on this phenomenon in terms of the 4P (person, press, process and product) model of creativity. Namely,…

Teaching mathematics by project-based learning (PBL) method on the use of educational technology offers an innovative teaching pedagogy at college. The "World Culture Art Created with Calculus Graphs of Equations" poster project was designed by the first author and was completed in the pilot Calculus course during the spring 2016…

Covariational reasoning has been the focus of many studies but only a few looked into this reasoning in the polar coordinate system. In fact, research on student's familiarity with polar coordinates and graphing in the polar coordinate system is scarce. This paper examines the challenges that students face when plotting polar curves using the…

Two decades ago, in an award-winning paper, Dan Kennedy (1995) likened learning mathematics to climbing a tree, for which there was only one way to climb: up a large and solid trunk. In the limited time that is available, many students give up the climb, impede others, fall off the trunk, or fail to climb the tree sufficiently well. In the case of…

A short series of practical classroom mathematics activities employing the use of a large and publicly accessible scientific data set are presented for use by students in years 9 and 10. The activities introduce and build understanding of integral calculus and trigonometric functions through the presentation of practical problem solving that…

In this paper, we report a pilot study on engaging a group of undergraduate students to explore the limits of sin(x)/x and tan(x)/x as x approaches to 0, with the use of non-graphic scientific calculators. By comparing the results in the pretest and the post-test, we found that the students had improvements in the tested items, which involved the…

Students have experienced difficulty in understanding and using the chain rule. This study aims at assisting the students to understand and apply the chain rule and thus inform the author's teaching for future learning of students. A questionnaire will be designed to explore the conceptual understanding of the concept of the chain rule by first…