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Teaching Roles in a Technology Intensive Core Undergraduate Mathematics Course

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The Mathematics Teacher in the Digital Era

Part of the book series: Mathematics Education in the Digital Era ((MEDE,volume 2))

Abstract

We discuss the dual teaching roles of university mathematics tutors, as teachers and policy makers, in relation to the classroom implementation of technology while guided by departmental policies. The main contribution of this chapter is the exemplification of these roles in an undergraduate mathematics programme, called Mathematics Integrated with Computers and Applications (MICA), with systemic technology integration. The current classroom practices of tutors in one of the MICA core courses for mathematics majors and future teachers of mathematics are examined. The role of the tutors in this course is to carefully guide the students’ instrumental genesis of programming technology for the investigation of both mathematics concepts and conjectures, and real-world applications. Acting as a mentor, the tutor encourages students’ mathematical creativity as they design, program, and use their own interactive mathematics Exploratory Objects.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter that focuses on teaching roles, the term ‘department’ will be used to denote a university administrative unit that has the responsibility to set curriculum, develop the department’s philosophy, etc., and the term ‘tutor’ will be used to denote a person who has a full-time position in the department, and is responsible for teaching university courses.

  2. 2.

    CAS, dynamic geometry software, programming, discrete mathematics software, simulation software, and/or statistical analysis software; i.e., excluding communication technologies, such as emails, text editors, LaTeX, online fora, etc.

  3. 3.

    Both the Object and a summary of the written report (based on the original report submitted as an assignment for the course) are accessible via a web site (Brock Math n.d.).

  4. 4.

    This method had previously been covered in an Exploratory Object assignment.

  5. 5.

    The web-version of Adam’s original EO contains only a static graph summarising this experiment due to the intense computations involved and the time required to produce the results.

  6. 6.

    MICA III has now evolved into two one-term optional courses recommended in the applied mathematics stream.

  7. 7.

    In 2012: three sections of MICA I, for a total of 80 students. In 2002: there were nine students in total enrolled in the course.

  8. 8.

    For their final project, future teachers may choose to create and test a so-called Learning Object for the learning of school mathematics concepts (Muller and Buteau 2006; Muller et al. 2009; Buteau and Muller 2010). See the web site (Brock Math n.d.) for other examples of student projects.

  9. 9.

    The survey question indicated, “Programming (Java, C++, Fortran, …)”.

  10. 10.

    See footnote 3.

  11. 11.

    See footnote 2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada

    Chantal Buteau & Eric Muller

Authors
  1. Chantal Buteau
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  2. Eric Muller
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Correspondence to Chantal Buteau .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Knowledge Lab Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK

    Alison Clark-Wilson

  2. Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Ornella Robutti

  3. Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Nathalie Sinclair

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Buteau, C., Muller, E. (2014). Teaching Roles in a Technology Intensive Core Undergraduate Mathematics Course. In: Clark-Wilson, A., Robutti, O., Sinclair, N. (eds) The Mathematics Teacher in the Digital Era. Mathematics Education in the Digital Era, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4638-1_8

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