Research-informed and collaborative reform in university mathematics teaching: The case of secondary to tertiary transition.

Witty, George, Hooper, Owen, Nardi, Elena and Biza, Irene (2025) Research-informed and collaborative reform in university mathematics teaching: The case of secondary to tertiary transition. In: Proceedings of the Fourteenth Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education (CERME14). UNSPECIFIED, pp. 2389-2390.

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Abstract

Mathematics students are known to face many difficulties during their transition from secondary to tertiary education (Gueudet, 2008). During the teaching of an introductory course for first-year mathematics students, the first author (Witty) encountered numerous issues which he associated with this transition, particularly related to students' attempts at mathematical communication, as well as their low engagement levels. For example, it was common to encounter students who would produce solutions that used new mathematical words and symbols, but lacked the rigour he would expect from something 'mathematical'. Gueudet (2008) states that, when students begin university, they notice the new language used by their teachers and imitate it: this "leads them to produce texts looking like mathematics, focusing sometimes more on the formmany symbols, usual language brought to a minimum than on the mathematical meaning" (p. 244). Similarly, Sfard (2008) notes that "there are important differences between construction and substantiation routines practiced in colloquial and literary mathematical discourses, and these routines change again in the transition from school discourse to the scholarly discourse of mathematicians" (p. 225). As Witty believed it is important to consider how to assist students in overcoming these differences and difficulties in their first year, he became interested in learning more about changes he could make to help. There have been calls for the design and evaluation of interventions that support students during the secondary-tertiary transition. For example, Biehler et al. (2022) state that "there is a growing interest in teaching practices fostering students' active engagement" (p. 10) and that research in mathematics education can support teachers at university-level in this aim. With this in mind, Witty embarked on the design, implementation and evaluation of a new set of teaching sessions created for a course on 'Mathematical Skills' he leads with the aim of alleviating some of the difficulties of the secondary-tertiary transition. Although this intervention was produced in a partnership between him and mathematics education researchers (Hooper, Nardi, Biza), here he reflects on his own experience, mainly of the design part, through a reflexive autoethnographic approach (Ellis et al., 2010).

Item Type:	Book Section
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > School of Engineering, Mathematics and Physics Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Research in Mathematics Education
Related URLs:	https://hal.science/CERME14/hal-05314344...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2026 16:30
Last Modified:	14 Jan 2026 16:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101614
DOI:

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