Teaching graphing formulas by hand as a means to promote students' symbol sense

Peter Kop*, Fred Janssen, Paul Drijvers, Jan van Driel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether teaching graphing formulas by hand could promote students’ symbol sense. During five lessons of 90 minutes, 21 grade-12 students worked on graphing tasks. To assess the effects of this intervention, nine months later, a symbol-sense test was administered to these students and to a control group of 93 students. Six students from the treatment group, who thought aloud during the test, showed their graphing-formulas symbol sense, but also some transfer, i.e., using symbol sense when solving algebraic problems, like taking a global view, switching of representation, and qualitative reasoning. The treatment group used more symbol-sense and scored significantly higher on the test than the control group. The results suggest that graphing formulas might be a means to teach symbol sense.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, 2019
EditorsMellony Graven, Hamsa Venkat, Anthony A Essien, Pamela Vale
PublisherPsychology of Mathematics Education (PME)
Pages488-495
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9780639821528
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Event43rd Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, PME 2019 - Pretoria, South Africa
Duration: 7 Jul 201912 Jul 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
Volume2
ISSN (Print)0771-100X
ISSN (Electronic)2790-3648

Conference

Conference43rd Annual Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, PME 2019
Country/TerritorySouth Africa
CityPretoria
Period7/07/1912/07/19

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 left to authors All rights reserved.

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