| Summary: | Mathematics departments experience large dropout rates among first-year students.
Attempts have been made to remedy this attrition by focusing on curriculum reform and
teaching-learning techniques. Less effort has gone into exploring the differences in
values, beliefs, expectations and experiences of teachers and students in a first year
calculus course.
The purpose of this study was to identify these differences in an effort to determine the
circumstances under which teaching and learning takes place in the classroom.
Identification of possible mismatches may provide a beneficial insight towards improving
the pedagogy of mathematics education in the first year calculus classroom.
To that extent, I conducted open-ended interviews and questionnaires with five faculty
members and with five students. The research was carried out at the mathematics
department of a Research University in Eastern Canada.
Interpretative analysis of the data focused on three spheres of interest: beliefs about:
the nature of mathematics,
the pedagogy of mathematics education, and
the aims of mathematics education and post-secondary university education.
It was found that differing perspectives for the first two spheres contribute to
mathematics anxiety among first year students. To address mathematics anxiety within
the first-year introductory calculus course, the study suggests that there is a need to (I)
develop a social constructivist theory of mathematics anxiety, (2) develop within the
professional practice of post-secondary mathematics education an awareness of the role
of communication, and (3) develop within post-secondary educational institutions an
awareness of the benefit of nurturing research among instructors into their individual
teaching practices. === Education, Faculty of === Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of === Graduate
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