Productive Struggle in Developmental Mathematics

This dissertation highlights the potential of productive struggle in addressing the issues of teaching and learning in developmental mathematics. This research presents a course designed to support productive struggle, empirical findings on students’ experiences and conceptions, and my own experience supporting students’ struggles.

The design of the course is oriented towards supporting productive struggle by engaging students with tasks that elicit uncertainty. Instruction was delayed, providing an opportunity to promote self-explanation as students explained and questioned their thinking with a partner. As the course instructor, I asked purposeful questions during students’ engagement with the tasks to show students that struggle is a necessary part of learning. This environment is in stark contrast to skill-and-drill instruction often found in developmental mathematics classrooms.

Empirical findings suggest that students experienced and conceptualized struggle and productive struggle in various ways. Significant to the findings was the connection to deep approaches to learning, persevering, positive affective structures, and habits of mind. Through phenomenography, semi-structured interviews were conducted, data was collected, and students’ experiences and conceptions were analyzed. The findings bring focus to the affective nature of learning, a facet infrequently explored in developmental mathematics. More importantly, these findings starkly contrast with students’ reliance on rote memorization often reported in developmental mathematics classrooms.

I engaged in the Discipline of Noticing to investigate my experience of supporting productive struggle. The methodology presented in this study acts as a form of professional development that simultaneously produces research for others to test in their own practice. This systematic inquiry into my practice contributes to the underrepresented area of self-based methodologies to understand instructors’ learning in mathematics teacher professional development. Deliberately honing my skill of noticing enhances the choices that can come to mind in my future practice of supporting productive struggle.