University students’ difficulties in solving application problems in calculus: Student perspectives

Klymchuk, Sergiy; Zverkova, Tatyana; Gruenwald, Norbert; Sauerbier, Gabriele

doi:10.1007/bf03217567

Cited by 32 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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Section: Stages In Students' Reasoning When Solving Context-based Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research has shown that in the first stage students often misunderstand the meaning of the tasks and misinterpret the terms used in the tasks (Bernardo, 1999;Klymchuk, Zverkova, Gruenwald, & Sauerbier, 2010). In the second stage, students struggle with identifying the mathematical concept or procedure that is needed to solve the tasks (Clements, 1980;Klymchuk et al, 2010). This difficulty relates to students' tendency either to ignore the context and try to apply a routine mathematical procedure without realistic considerations (Blum, 2015;Verschaffel, Greer, & De Corte, 2000;Xin, Lin, Zhang, & Yan, 2007) or to take too much account of the context of the tasks so that no mathematical concept or procedure is used (Boaler, 1994).…”

Section: Stages In Students' Reasoning When Solving Context-based Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Opportunity-to-Learn to Solve Context-based Mathematics Tasks and Students’ Performance in Solving these Tasks – Lessons from Indonesia

Wijaya

Heuvel–Panhuizen

Doorman

et al. 2018

EURASIA J MATH SCI T

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This study investigated whether providing opportunity-to-learn can improve Indonesian students' performance in solving context-based mathematics tasks. On the basis of an inventory of Indonesian students' difficulties with these tasks and an analysis of textbooks and classroom practices, an intervention program for mathematics teachers was developed. This program contained tasks with relevant and essential contexts with missing or superfluous information, but without explicitly given mathematical procedures. The program also comprised guidelines for a consultative teaching approach with metacognitive prompts and questions for discussion to promote reflection in class. A field experiment with a pretest-posttest control-group design was carried out in six junior high schools in Indonesia involving 299 eightgraders. Students in the experimental group made significantly more progress on solving context-based mathematics tasks than students in the control group. Furthermore, an analysis of students' errors revealed that experimental students made significantly fewer task comprehension errors than control students. These results show that providing opportunity-to-learn, that is offering context-based tasks to students, which require mathematical modeling, and having teachers knowing the characteristics of such tasks and using a consultative teaching approach, can improve students' ability in solving context-based tasks.

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Section: Stages In Students' Reasoning When Solving Context-based Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stages In Students' Reasoning When Solving Context-based Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunity-to-Learn to Solve Context-based Mathematics Tasks and Students’ Performance in Solving these Tasks – Lessons from Indonesia

Wijaya

Heuvel–Panhuizen

Doorman

et al. 2018

EURASIA J MATH SCI T

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“…Even worse failure rate was reported in another study on engineering university students' difficulties in solving a problem from calculus that had a "non-routine" wording [9]. About 95% of the students (187 out of 197) failed to solve an application problem on a test mainly due to the unusual for them wording of the problem: instead of the more common formulation "find the velocity that minimizes the total cost of a journey" the question was "show that to minimize the total cost of a journey the truck should run approximately 28 km/h".…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Puzzle-based learning in engineering mathematics: students’ attitudes

Klymchuk

2017

International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and

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The article reports on the results of two case studies on the impact of the regular use of puzzles as a pedagogical strategy in the teaching and learning of engineering mathematics. The intention of using puzzles is to engage students' emotions, creativity and curiosity and also enhance their generic thinking skills and lateral thinking "outside the box". Students' attitudes towards this pedagogical strategy are evaluated via short questionnaires with two groups of university students taking a second year engineering mathematics course. Students' responses to the questionnaire are presented and analysed in the paper.

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“…Difficulties with mathematics are also experienced by university students. A study of Klymchuk, Zverkova, Gruenwald, and Sauerbier (2010) revealed that many university students could not construct a simple function that representing a familiar context. A general perspective on students' difficulties in mathematics is given by Russell, O'Dwyer, and Miranda (2009) who found that students' difficulties in mastering concept occur are caused by students' inability to link between the knowledge that they are studying and the prior knowledge they have.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Diagnosing Students’ Learning Difficulties in the Eyes of Indonesian Mathematics Teachers

Wijaya¹,

Retnawati

Setyaningrum

et al. 2019

J. Math. Educ.

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Teachers’ diagnostic practice on students-difficulties is one of the important steps in designing and managing classroom lessons. The purpose of this study was to explore teachers’ perception and practices regarding diagnosing students’ learning difficulties. The participants of the study were 28 Indonesian mathematics teachers of Junior High School. The data was collected through a Focus Group Discussion and a teacher questionnaire. The data were analyzed qualitatively to describe how the teachers perceive learning difficulties and how the teachers diagnosed students’ learning difficulties. The results of the analysis reveal that the teachers do not yet perform an in-depth diagnosis of students’ difficulties in learning mathematics. The teachers only focus on the mathematics topics and non-mathematical issues, instead of on students’ thinking process. The teachers also do not differentiate the diagnosis, evaluation, and prediction test. With regard to the strategies used by the teachers to diagnose students’ difficulties, analyzing students’ responses to tests was the majority. In this respect, observing students’ learning process during classroom activities is rarely done by the teachers in the purpose of diagnosing students’ learning difficulties. The results of the diagnosis are mainly used as the basis for remedial and drill and practices. The results imply that more support is needed for teachers to improve their competences particularly in diagnosing students’ thinking process difficulties when learning mathematics.

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University students’ difficulties in solving application problems in calculus: Student perspectives

Cited by 32 publications

References 17 publications

Opportunity-to-Learn to Solve Context-based Mathematics Tasks and Students’ Performance in Solving these Tasks – Lessons from Indonesia

Opportunity-to-Learn to Solve Context-based Mathematics Tasks and Students’ Performance in Solving these Tasks – Lessons from Indonesia

Puzzle-based learning in engineering mathematics: students’ attitudes

Diagnosing Students’ Learning Difficulties in the Eyes of Indonesian Mathematics Teachers

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