University of North Alabama
Contributed Paper-Faculty
General Math Education
An Instructional Design Using Computer Programming to Improve Mathematical Reasoning
Common Core State Standards emphasize the mathematical practice of abstract reasoning as students progress from grade to grade. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics recommends that all secondary mathematics curriculum and instruction focus on infusing the classroom with reasoning and sense making. It follows that our undergraduates preparing to teach secondary mathematics need knowledge of and experience with explicit instruction in mathematical reasoning.
We have designed, developed and piloted a theory-based instructional treatment to address the lack of precise and clearly delineated instruction in this area. Our instruction uses computer programming to push students to form the mental structures needed for the application of abstraction and generalization in problems requiring infinite iteration. We have piloted the instructional treatment in a professional development workshop for high school math teachers, in our undergraduate classes for math and computer science majors and in regional high school math classrooms.
In this talk we will discuss our research experience with eleven secondary mathematics pre-service teachers. We will give details of the instructional design and report our preliminary findings. The prospective secondary math teachers participated in the research design as if they were high school subjects. Our preliminary results indicate that the pre-service teachers thought computer programming would be useful in their future classrooms. We also found that undergraduates benefited from taking part in our lessons written for secondary students in that their abstract reasoning skills improved.
Co-authors: James Jerkins and Janet Jenkins, University of North Alabama
