![]() The educational environment of high school calculus may explain some of the difference, Sadler said.Ī high school class, he said, might have just 15 or 20 students, each receiving constant support from the teacher. There’s no easy answer to why weaker students who take calculus in high school get the most out of it, the researchers said. “We looked at how students did in college calculus … and tried to figure out what the predictive influence of taking a calculus course in high school was versus mastering those precalculus subjects,” Sadler said. “Then the professors remove the first page with the student’s name and we get their final grade and all the self-reported information.” “They fill out the detailed survey at the beginning of the semester … and there’s a field on the last page where the faculty member can put their grade,” Sonnert said. In designing their study, Sadler and Sonnert sought not only demographic data, but also information on students’ educational history and mathematics training. ![]() And among those who took calculus in high school, it was the weakest students who got the most from the class.īest science teachers can predict their pupils’ misconceptions, study says The study’s results, Sadler said, provide a clear answer - a firm grip on precalculus subjects had twice the impact of a high school course. “We wanted to see if we could settle that argument - which is more important, the math that prepares you for calculus, or a first run-through when you’re in high school followed by a more serious course in college?” “We study the transition from high school to college, and on one side of that there are college professors who say calculus is really a college subject, but on the other side there are high school teachers who say calculus is really helpful for their students, and the ones who want to be scientists and engineers get a lot out of it,” Sadler said. Wright Senior Lecturer on Celestial Navigation and Astronomy, and Sonnert, a research associate, led the study, which was described in a paper published in May in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. That insight comes from a study of more than 6,000 college freshmen at 133 institutions carried out by the Science Education Department of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. What’s more important is mastering the prerequisites - algebra, geometry, and trigonometry - that lead to calculus. The word alone is enough strike terror into the hearts of even the most accomplished students, but for those who break out in cold sweats at the thought of differentiation rules and integral tables, researchers Philip Sadler and Gerhard Sonnert bring a message of hope.Ĭontrary to conventional wisdom, taking high school calculus isn’t necessary for success in college calculus.
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