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Faculty of Education
Investigating Students’ Mathematical Thinking Using Video Diaries
Research by Donna Kotsopoulos, Joanne Lee
Nov 19/10
Not surprisingly, students’ inability to complete homework has been linked to achievement (Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006). Although in some instances motivation and social circumstances contribute to students’ inabilities to complete mathematics homework, the curriculum and how it is experienced in the classroom by students are important key influencing factors. This research project investigates students’ ability to independently make sense of mathematics encountered in school, while completing homework in their own settings, after a lapse in time from the initial classroom learning experience (i.e., that evening or the next evening). The purposes of this research are
(1) to capture students’ verbalized cognitive processes as they try to make sense of the mathematics during homework,
(2) to identify the sorts of conceptual challenges students encounter in the curriculum,
(3) to examine the connections between the classroom experiences and students’ verbalized cognitive processes, and
(4) to track, over the course of one year, how students’ abilities to communicate about their mathematical challenges, shift over time and curriculum.
Six eighth-grade students are documenting their mathematical experiences at-home using video diaries. Daily mathematics classes are also being videotaped for cross-analysis, given that teaching practices contribute to students’ ability to makes sense of mathematics in other settings (Ball, Bass, Sleep, & Thames, 2005; Lerman, 1998). Documenting students’ cognitive processes in real-time, in their own settings as they are doing the homework, may yield important insight in terms of how learning might be better supported in mathematics classrooms.
