Exploring How to Support Students' Co-Emergence of Representational Fluency and Functional Thinking

• In Event: Exploring Student and Teacher Cognition in Mathematics Education

Abstract

This research identifies sets of teacher moves, prompts, and promoting actions (TMPPA) for supporting students to conceive of quadratic functions as representations of covarying quantities. In other words, we characterized sets of TMPPAs, which may support students to co-develop representational fluency and functional thinking. We conducted a teaching experiment with eight high school students following a design-based research methodology. Through analyses of enhanced transcription of small and whole group interactions, we characterized TMPPAs for supporting students' understanding of quadratic functions. The TMPPAs clustered around characterizations of students' reasoning, including creating and translating representations when reasoning about quantities. These findings endeavor to complement and advance existing literature on teachers' moves and promoting actions for supporting students' understanding of functions.

Authors

• Nigar Altindis, Syracuse University

• Nicole L. Fonger, Syracuse University