TY - JOUR
T1 - A Conceptual Approach to Calculus Made Possible by Technology
AU - Thompson, Patrick W.
AU - Byerley, Cameron
AU - Hatfield, Neil
N1 - Funding Information:
Research reported in this article was supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. DUE-1050595. Any recommendations or conclusions stated here are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the NSF.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Calculus reform and using technology to teach calculus are two longtime endeavors that appear to have failed to make the differences in student understanding predicted by proponents. We argue that one reason for the lack of effect is that the fundamental structure of the underlying curriculum remains unchanged. It does not seriously consider students' development of connected meanings for rate-of-change functions and accumulation functions. We report an approach to introductory calculus that takes coherence of meanings as the central criterion by which it is developed, and we demonstrate that this radical reconstruction of the ideas of calculus is made possible by its uses of computing technology.
AB - Calculus reform and using technology to teach calculus are two longtime endeavors that appear to have failed to make the differences in student understanding predicted by proponents. We argue that one reason for the lack of effect is that the fundamental structure of the underlying curriculum remains unchanged. It does not seriously consider students' development of connected meanings for rate-of-change functions and accumulation functions. We report an approach to introductory calculus that takes coherence of meanings as the central criterion by which it is developed, and we demonstrate that this radical reconstruction of the ideas of calculus is made possible by its uses of computing technology.
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U2 - 10.1080/07380569.2013.768941
DO - 10.1080/07380569.2013.768941
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84879637362
SN - 0738-0569
VL - 30
SP - 124
EP - 147
JO - Computers in the Schools
JF - Computers in the Schools
IS - 1-2
ER -