2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

semester, about half of the course readings and time in class were focused on the notion offunctions from the perspective of two big ideas: multiple representations of functions andfamilies of functions (Cooney, et al., 2010). The readings and activities for this course engagedthe students in learning about not only the multiple representations of functions and families offunctions (e.g., the concept of “parent functions” was a particular focus) as content knowledgefor teaching but also the importance of teaching their future students with these big ideas aboutfunction as the focus.FindingsThe results of the pre- and post-test indicate little to no improvement in each of the 4areas of focus and are shown in Tables 1-4 below.Table 1Graphical RepresentationsItem 1 2 3 4 5 6 7Score Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post0 17% 14% 33% 57% 17% 14% 17% 14% 17% 14%1 33% 14% 17% 14%2 67% 86% 83% 86% 67% 43% 83% 86% 83% 86% 83% 86% 83% 86%Item 8 9 10 11 12 13 OverallScore Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post0 17% 14% 33% 57% 17% 14% 17% 14% 15%1 33% 14% 33% 14% 9% 4%2 83% 86% 67% 43% 83% 86% 67% 86% 67% 86% 83% 100% 77% 81%Table 2VerbalItem 14 15a 15b 15c 15d OverallScore Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post Pre Post0 33% 57% 17% 50% 29% 17% 14% 23% 20%1 33% 14% 17% 17% 33% 20% 3%2 67% 43% 50% 86% 83% 100% 33% 71% 50% 86% 57% 77%Proceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 28