The relationships between math anxiety and other variables such as students' motivation and confidence have been extensively studied. The main purpose of the present study was to employ a machine learning approach to provide a deeper understanding of variables associated with math anxiety. Specifically, we applied classification and regression…

Following national trends in both mathematics placement and developmental mathematics coursework progression, this study investigates alternative placement options that remove a developmental mathematics barrier for as many students as possible by providing alternative placement pathways. By allowing students to be placed directly into the…

We investigate aspects of reform enacted in 66 class observations from 18 institutions collected as part of the National Study of University Calculus in the US. We examined four aspects related to how problems were solved in class: the extent of student involvement, the representations and technology used, and specific features of the problems…

Background: Calculus instruction is underexamined as a source of racialized and gendered inequity in higher education, despite research that documents minoritized students' marginalizing experiences in undergraduate mathematics classes. This study fills this research gap by investigating mathematics faculty's perceptions of the significance of…

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of secondary instruction in the United States transitioned to an online environment. In many parts of the country, online schooling continued for upwards of two years. Many experts have hypothesized an "academic slide"--a reduction in student learning--following this period of online…

From 2012 to 2019, the proportion of undergraduate economics degrees denoted as "Econometrics and Quantitative Economics" (STEM-eligible) conferred annually increased from 1 percent to 22 percent. The authors present results from a survey of the 73 institutions conferring at least one STEM-eligible economics degree in 2017 or 2018. They…

Many researchers have stressed the embodied nature of mathematical understanding. Here we explore how embodied knowledge may evolve as students learn a basic calculus concept: the rate of change. We examined undergraduate students with different levels of calculus knowledge working in pairs to model the rate of change in an everyday phenomenon.…

As the demand for qualified science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and business college-degreed workers increases, underrepresented minorities, females, first-generation college students, and students who are economically disadvantaged remain as four high-risk STEM populations. A majority of undergraduate STEM and business…

In this paper, six interviews with course coordinators from two mathematics departments are analysed to better understand the relationship between course coordination and local data in the Precalculus to Calculus 2 sequence with respect to online grading platforms. We highlight several potential coordinator decisions and present illustrative…

Students' perceptions of cost are important predictors of academic and motivational outcomes. Though cost has been described as the anticipated effort one must put forth on an activity and what an individual sacrifices to complete a task, no known work has examined the extent to which anticipated cost beliefs predict experienced cost or whether…

Gateway courses are high-enrollment, low completion introductory courses foundational to a major. Because these courses have a disproportionately negative impact on the retention and persistence of Latinx students to their desired STEM major, we refer to these understudied, high-stakes courses as gatekeeping courses. Framing our exploratory study…

Massive pretrained language models have garnered attention and controversy due to their ability to generate humanlike responses: Attention due to their frequent indistinguishability from human-generated phraseology and narratives and controversy due to the fact that their convincingly presented arguments and facts are frequently simply false. Just…

The Mathematical Association of America's "Precalculus to Calculus: Insights and Innovations Conference" brought together representatives of mathematics departments from across the country with members of two national research projects to share and discuss both research findings and on-the-ground concerns of faculty. In this article, we…

Students' procedural knowledge and conceptual understanding of matrices can improve when they use technology, in particular spreadsheets, as a tool. Complex real-world applications of matrix calculations are time-consuming and prone to errors if done by hand, yet calculations can be performed easily with spreadsheets. In this article, the author…

Background: The Learning Assistant (LA) model with its subsequent support and training has evidenced significant gains for undergraduate STEM learning and persistence, especially in high-stakes courses like Calculus. Yet, when a swift and unexpected transition occurs from face-to-face to online, remote learning of the LA environment, it is unknown…