Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Education
Calculus Students' Reasoning About Slope And Derivative As Rates Of Change, Jennifer G. Tyne
Calculus Students' Reasoning About Slope And Derivative As Rates Of Change, Jennifer G. Tyne
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Students’ low success rates in college calculus courses are a factor that leads to high attrition rates from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degree programs. To help reach our nation’s goal of one million additional STEM majors in the next decade, we must address the conceptual difficulties of our students. Studies have shown that students have difficulty with the concepts of slope and derivative, especially in cases when students are asked to utilize these concepts in real-life contexts.
For this study, written surveys were collected from 69 differential (first semester) calculus students. Follow-up clinical interviews were performed on 13 …