However, research indicates that while mathematicians seem to adopt the use of computations and programming - at least to some extent - in their research practices, they are much less likely to adopt programming as part of their teaching practices. While there is evidence that mathematicians themselves point to institutional factors to explain this (e.g., their students do not know how to program), research shows that mathematics students generally have good access to courses in programming, indicating that other factors may be at play.
In this talk, I report on an ongoing analysis of interviews with 15 mathematicians at a site where there has been longstanding institutional support for the integration of programming in undergraduate mathematics education. I will discuss preliminary results that point to the significance of epistemological factors in explaining the discrepancy in mathematicians' use of programming. In particular, I will point to similarities to previous research on the gap between how mathematicians value intuition in their research and teaching.
We will serve refreshments, coffee and tea. Welcome!
The bi-weekly ODD seminar series at CCSE
The Open Discussions on Didactics (ODD) is a seminar series on Mondays at 13:30-14:30 every other week (odd week numbers) at CCSE.
The seminar will be maximum one hour, often closer to half an hour. It is an informal arena to present and discuss learning theory, educational research and teaching experiences within computational science. To cater to the highly heterogeneous backgrounds and interests of students, teachers and researchers in our environment, we aim for seminars that introduce listeners to new ideas within a broad spectrum of aspects, and that invites reflection and discussion.
Presentations need not be mature and polished - to the contrary we hope that as many as possible wants to share undigested observations and reflections in short presentations of varied form and topics. We hope to have enough contributions to frequently have the meetings as lightning talk sessions, where three different speakers will each give a 5-10-minute presentation followed by discussion.