Sfard and Thompson (1994) state that what matters most is that educators develop ways of thinking, teaching, and learning mathematics. This study introduced constructive habituation, a new strategy developed to aid both students and teachers in the thinking, teaching, and learning of mathematics. Constructive habituation attempts to unite constructivist teaching methods aimed at supporting students conceptual understanding of content and habituationist teaching method aimed at establishing routine responses to routine tasks. This study is exploratory in nature, designed to investigate if constructive habituation is a more effective means than a traditional teaching method in helping students reach process-object reification as evidenced by higher levels of student achievement.
The study primarily addressed introductory function concepts and symmetry and transformations of functions. The subjects were university students enrolled in a precalculus I course. The results indicated that constructive habituation was not a more effective means in helping students reach process-object reification than a traditional teaching method. No significant differences were found for any of the variables examined. However, some promising practical results were revealed. The students taught using the experimental method averaged more than nine points higher than the students taught using a more traditional teaching method on an examination that evaluated their understandings of the relationship between changes made to the graph of a function and changes made to its formula. Explanations on why constructive habituation may not have reached its intended goal are given. A discussion is presented of the developmental stage at which constructive habituation may become an effective pedagogical method. Study also includes a brief history of the major pedagogical movements over the last half century and the psychological perspectives that influenced each.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11102004-120902 |
| Date | 12 November 2004 |
| Creators | Peterson, Alonzo F. |
| Contributors | James Wandersee, Gestur Olafsson, Joseph Meyinsse, Eugene Kennedy, David Kirshner, William Pinar |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11102004-120902/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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