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Virtually every class focuses on memorization and not conceptual understanding, unfortunately. That's what students have to do to survive high school and colle

Virtually every class focuses on memorization and not conceptual understanding, unfortunately. That's what students have to do to survive high school and college courses, because that's how they are taught and assessed. A recent study of calculus courses found for example that almost 80% of the test questions simply involved recalling and applying a procedure (i.e., "plug and chug"). http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/cspcc/TSG13_Bressoud.pdf http://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/cspcc/TSG13_Bress... The students don't want it to be this way: "74% preferred to make sense of mathematics rather than simply memorizing it and 72% saw the role of the instructor as helping students to reason through problems on their own rather than showing students how to work the problem". And yet because it is easier to test and grade rote learning and memorization, we end up killing students' interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and most students who enter college as a STEM major end up changing majors, transferring, or dropping out. "students leave STEM majors primarily because of poor instruction in their mathematics and science courses, with calculus often cited as a primary reason."

belorn 13y ago
Thanks for an excellent comment with that link for further digging into the subject. The study could have easily been a interesting article on HN by it self. The only thing I wish the study explored is what would be the calculus instructors' preferred teaching method, and compare that to the students'.
alanctgardner2 13y ago
I don't know how much stock I'd put in self-reported reasons for attrition. At my school the undergrad professors for calc are all excellent - well reviewed by students, winning awards, etc. Still, a lot of STEM students drop out when they're taking first-year calc, because STEM programs are also just very hard. Even if we axed the first-year math requirements, I suspect those people would make it two or three years in before getting caught up on another class, and ultimately leaving anyways.
- edtechdev 13y ago
  Student ratings actually negatively correlate with learning I think maybe I'll trust the decades of research on math education rather than your intuitions. For example, there is research showing that many more students succeed in calculus when the math is taught in context, not abstractly and plug and chug. One set of studies showed that such a course increased calculus pass rates from 60% to 90% (see the Wright State engineering math course, and see the ENGAGE Engineering project). Another large set of studies shows that student learning can double and graduation rates triple when active, participatory learning techniques are used by the instructor instead of traditional lecture (The PCAST report - Engage to Excel cites it).

belorn 13y ago

Thanks for an excellent comment with that link for further digging into the subject. The study could have easily been a interesting article on HN by it self. The only thing I wish the study explored is what would be the calculus instructors' preferred teaching method, and compare that to the students'.

alanctgardner2 13y ago

I don't know how much stock I'd put in self-reported reasons for attrition. At my school the undergrad professors for calc are all excellent - well reviewed by students, winning awards, etc. Still, a lot of STEM students drop out when they're taking first-year calc, because STEM programs are also just very hard. Even if we axed the first-year math requirements, I suspect those people would make it two or three years in before getting caught up on another class, and ultimately leaving anyways.

edtechdev 13y ago
Student ratings actually negatively correlate with learning I think maybe I'll trust the decades of research on math education rather than your intuitions. For example, there is research showing that many more students succeed in calculus when the math is taught in context, not abstractly and plug and chug. One set of studies showed that such a course increased calculus pass rates from 60% to 90% (see the Wright State engineering math course, and see the ENGAGE Engineering project). Another large set of studies shows that student learning can double and graduation rates triple when active, participatory learning techniques are used by the instructor instead of traditional lecture (The PCAST report - Engage to Excel cites it).