Abstract

Several dance and industrial design students were given the opportunity to attend a non-traditional mathematics course. The nature of this course prompted student interaction and expected collaboration. My research focuses on one dance student, Sara, who did not consider herself a strong mathematics student, but who understood physical motion very well. This paper explores the evolution of Sara's representations for physical motion in a given task, and discusses her reasoning for keeping or dismissing various parts of her representations during the course of this task. I examine first how Sara learns mathematics with understanding in this task, and second how this class gave her the opportunity to learn significant mathematics by encouraging her to ask questions and reason about mathematics. The research presented in this paper shows that teaching mathematics can be successful if students are given the opportunity to investigate tasks designed to explore significant mathematics.

Degree

College and Department

Physical and Mathematical Sciences; Mathematics Education

Rights

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