Teaching integration with layers and representations: A case study

• Main Authors: Joshua Von Korff, N. Sanjay Rebello
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2012-05-01
• Series: Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.010125

We designed a sequence of seven lessons to facilitate learning of integration in a physics context. We implemented this sequence with a single college sophomore, “Amber,” who was concurrently enrolled in a first-semester calculus-based introductory physics course which covered topics in mechanics. We outline the philosophy underpinning these lessons, which characterizes integration in terms of layers and representations. We describe how Amber learned to give oral presentations in which she told a story about how integration comes from products, sums, and limits in a variety of physics contexts. We conclude that by the end of our lessons, Amber was able to conceptualize and explain integrals using multiple representations. In one case, she was able to solve a novel problem about integration in an unfamiliar context (center of mass.) Based on our previous research about integration, we suggest that these achievements would have been unattainable with the use of a single one or two hour lesson.