Masters students publish an article in NJ Mathematics Teacher Journal

As part of MATH 513 “Educational Technology for School Mathematics” taught by Dr. Panorkou, our MA and MS students designed a DESMOS task, implemented it in a classroom and wrote an article about it! Check out the full article Analyzing Students’ Interpretations of Slope Using Stories by Ana DaSilva Jesus, Edgar Juarez, Jessica Melnyczuk and Anthony Rappa. In their article, the authors describe a study they conducted on the effect of incorporating stories, in both written and video formats, on how students contextualize the mathematical concept of slope.

Article Abstract

Understanding slope in terms of the context of a problem can be a challenging topic for students when they perceive slope as simply a computational skill. This study considers the effect of incorporating stories, in both written and video formats, to assist students in the contextualization of slope. A DESMOS task was designed and implemented with seventh graders to support real-world connections and real-world knowledge transfer, modeled through multiple mathematical representations. By engaging with an interactive activity that relates to students’ personal interests, students were able to demonstrate aptitude in identifying dependent and independent variables, make connections between multiple representations and, as a result, contextualize slope in terms of positive and negative rates of change. The findings of this study suggest that shifting teaching practices away from a procedural focus and incorporating stories can support students in developing a more conceptual understanding of slope.