Give students opportunities to make sense of varying increases

2018 began with news articles about varying increases:

• U.S. Private Payrolls Growth Accelerates; Jobless Claims Up
• UK Productivity Growth Hits Six-Year High After Weakest Decade Since 1820s
• Euro Zone Factory Growth Surges to Record; More Uneven in Asia

What kinds of opportunities help students to make sense of accelerating growth?

In our recent research article, we report on a study identifying learning conditions that help early secondary students to “discern variation in unidirectional change.” Or put another way, make sense of accelerating growth.

We identify two conditions:

Provide students opportunities to conceive of attributes as capable of varying and possible to measure.

Possible to Measure

How students think about the attributes matters. Attributes such as length can be easier for students to conceive of measuring, than attributes such as volume or time.

capable of varying

Give students opportunities to make sense of change as happening. Too often, students only have opportunities to think about how much change has accrued.

Want more? Click the link to read our article.

Johnson, Heather Lynn, and Evan McClintock. “A Link between Students’ Discernment of Variation in Unidirectional Change and Their Use of Quantitative Variational Reasoning.” Educational Studies in Mathematics, Springer Netherlands, Jan. 2018, pp. 1–18.

Want to try this with students?

Use one of the Techtivities we developed in collaboration with Dan Meyer and the team at Desmos.