Having the ability to make informed decisions about health, financial investments, and even the weather are all important to our everyday lives. However, most people receive no formal education on how to read and understand data presented in formats such as data tables and graphs. Research within the field of statistical reasoning demonstrates a…

As educators, it is important for us to recognize that our assessment methods affect student attitudes. If we want students to learn from their mistakes and counteract a fixed-mindset of learning, perhaps we should look at what we incentivize in the classroom. Some professors are attempting to counteract math and test anxiety, poor STEM retention,…

The research this report belongs to aims at exploring the functional reasoning of high-school students from a covariation approach and proposing a framework to describe and predict the student's responses to modeling tasks in Dynamic Geometrical Situations. Items were designed for the students to build/construct the corresponding function guided…

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…

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…

Many teachers of intermediate algebra or precalculus use an activity where balls are dropped from known heights and the heights of the bounces are recorded. The "bounce height" will be a roughly constant fraction of the "drop height." Then one can plot each bounce height against its bounce number, an exponential function can…

Discovery learning has long been a part of mathematics teaching in the elementary and middle grades. Since the 1960s and 1970s, based on the work of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, and others, helping students 'discover' or 'construct' their own understandings of mathematical concepts through well-designed activities facilitated by a competent teacher…

Precalculus and calculus are considered gatekeeper courses because of their academic challenge and status as requirements for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and non-STEM majors alike. Despite college mathematics often being seen as a neutral space, the field has identified ways that expectations, interactions, and…

In recent years, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have gained increasing importance in the field of physics. Despite efforts to enhance DEI, physics still faces numerous challenges in this area. This dissertation is divided into three main chapters, aiming to investigate the significance of learning-related emotions and physics identity as…

The Forty Fifth Annual meeting of the North American chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education was held PME-NA 45 in Reno, Nevada, October 1-4, 2023. The conference theme is "Engaging All Learners." Math learning should be a joyful experience for all students. When students are engaged and inspired,…

We report our findings and perspective to document the knowledge exhibited by three experienced high school teachers in their instructional decisions for lessons on the equation of an exponential function. We describe the nature of the mathematical ideas and connections teachers promoted in discourse and the decisions that supported the emergence…

The paper describes active learning strategies used in undergraduate college algebra and business calculus courses. There are a variety of active learning strategies described in the literature. We wanted to implement a few that together, satisfy the key characteristics of active learning strategies. The active learning strategies described in…

The set of functions {x[superscript q] | q[element of][real numbers set]} is linearly independent over R (with respect to any open subinterval of (0, 8)). The titular result is a corollary for any integer n = 2 (and the domain [0, 8)). Some more accessible proofs of that result are also given. Let F be a finite field of characteristic p and…

The standard technique taught in calculus courses for partial fraction expansions uses undetermined coefficients to generate a system of linear equations; we present a derivative-based technique that calculus and differential equations instructors can use to reinforce connections to calculus. Simple algebra shows that we can use the derivative to…

During professional development, the authors learned about strings--a powerful instructional routine used in elementary classrooms to elicit students' mental mathematics strategies and use those strategies to build conceptual understanding. Strings provided the authors with a way to make relatively small changes to guided notes in algebra 1,…