MATH 505: Educational Issues of Undergraduate Mathematics (Spring 2006)

Instructor: David Henderson

Meeting Time & Room

This semester the course will examine the questions:

What do we mean when we say a student is good in mathematics?

What does it mean to understand a piece of mathematics (in the context of undergraduate courses)?

There seems to be little consensus among mathematicians as to the answer to these questions. We will examine what is written in the literature (and maybe have some invited speakers) about the issue. We will then look at what research and other articles in the literature have to say about the questions:

How can we tell if a student understands a piece of mathematics?

Is there conceivable research that we might perform to answer such questions?

Each student taking the course for credit will be required to write and present a paper examining some aspect of the above questions.

Last modified: November 7, 2005