STEM Learning and Learning Environments  

Scaffolding Strategies for Undergraduate Mathematics Modeling Skills

Effective Years: 2018-2026

Maintaining an effective pipeline of students into STEM careers depends upon their ability to learn mathematical modeling. Mathematical modeling involves creating a mathematical representation that can describe a nonmathematical problem. This CAREER: Scaffolding Strategies for Undergraduate Mathematics Modeling Skills project is designed to increase understanding about how students learn mathematical modeling, and then to use that information to improve teaching of mathematical modeling. Research indicates that learning to create mathematical models is often difficult for students. Because of this difficulty, students benefit from strategies that help them progress from their current level of understanding to higher levels of understanding and mastery. These scaffolding strategies appear to be especially important when math is used to describe non-math problems. This project has two research goals: 1) to understand how undergraduate STEM students build a mathematical model, including the process by which they define a mathematical strategy to describe a nonmathematical problem; and 2) to identify task features and facilitator scaffolding strategies that best support the growth of students' mathematical modeling abilities. The project will focus on three critical competencies related to mathematical modeling: making assumptions, mathematizing, and validating. Improving student skills in mathematics is important for improving student performance in STEM fields, a national priority. A mixed-methods study will be conducted to address three major research questions: 1) What modeling capabilities are most relevant to success in STEM courses, according to STEM professors? 2) How do different modeling tasks elicit different types of student reasoning, and which of these reasoning types are the most promising for improving STEM students' modeling competencies? 3) What scaffolding strategies are most promising for improving STEM students' modeling competencies and why? To answer these questions, the project will be conducted in three phases: a sensitizing study, a probing study, and an efficacy study. Interpretive qualitative analysis will be used to understand why and how students engaged in the competencies identified in Phase 1 and 2. In Phase 3, the efficacy study, interviews will be conducted with specific scaffolding contingencies to examine relationships among task environment, scaffolding strategies, and modeling competencies. An education plan involves training graduate assistants to implement the identified scaffolding strategies in mathematics and mathematics education classrooms. These results will then be disseminated more broadly. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

11 Publications Related to This Project: