The Effect of Representation and Representational Sequence on Students’ Understanding

This study investigates the effect of representational sequence on students’ understanding of mathematical concepts. Pilot studies were conducted with 129 high school students on solving inverse trigonometric identities and with 10 pre-service secondary teachers on representing Simpson’s Paradox. Structured activities with a variety of representations and representational sequences were used to examine the impact on students’ learning. This study also includes outcomes of surveys of 8 middle school teachers on different aspects of using representations in mathematics classroom. Our ongoing work finds this impact significant and claims that particular representational sequences need to be sensitive to specific content, learning outcomes, student prior knowledge and learning style.