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2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Documents

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Restricted document 2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings 
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The theme of the 2017 Physics Education Research (PER) Conference was "Mathematization and Physics Education."

The focus on mathematics in physics is increasing along with connections between the PER and Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (RUME) communities. Thus we highlighted mathematization research at the 2017 PERC. Mathematization refers to the spontaneous tendency to use mathematical concepts to quantify and make sense of the physical world. It is not about how well people can perform mathematical procedures. Rather, mathematization describes how people conceptualize the meaning of mathematics in the context of physics.

Expert-like mathematization in physics involves both a procedural and conceptual mastery of the prerequisite mathematics involved. Gray and Tall highlighted this distinction and refer to the target learning goal as proceptual understanding, in which procedural mastery and conceptual understanding coexist. When reasoning mathematically with physics quantities, many students become entrenched in a procedural approach. Some reach a high level of procedural efficiency without much conceptual mathematical understanding, while other students develop greater mathematical flexibility. An achievement gap emerges between those performing procedurally and those developing greater flexibility. This gap in early math learning is referred to as the proceptual divide.

The proceptual divide is evident in physics courses, where success depends on having a proceptual understanding of both the prerequisite math and the learned physics. For example, the obstacles calculus level students encounter using basic proportional reasoning when it involves physics quantities and real numbers, rather than everyday quantities and whole numbers. Similarly, most introductory physics students approach symbol-rich physics problems that involve calculus or trigonometry as a procedure, framing their task as one of answermaking instead of sensemaking.

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Published March 1, 2018
Last Modified March 30, 2018

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Supplemental Documents (3)

2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Front Matter 

The 2017 PERC Proceedings Front Matter includes its title page, table of contents, preface, conference overview, and introduction.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Published March 1, 2018
Last Modified March 30, 2018

This file has previous versions.

2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Preface 

The preface of the 2017 PERC Proceedings.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Published March 1, 2018
Last Modified March 14, 2018

This file has previous versions.

Restricted document 2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Back Matter 
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The 2017 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings Back Matter contains the author index and conference participant list.

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Published March 1, 2018
Last Modified March 2, 2018

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