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Reflections on a “Math Disaster”: the Role of Instructor Confusion in the Classroom

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Conference

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Portland, Oregon

Publication Date

June 23, 2024

Start Date

June 23, 2024

End Date

July 12, 2024

Conference Session

Cultivating Community, Wellness, and Character Development

Tagged Division

Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/47931

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Paper Authors

biography

Lorena S. Grundy Tufts University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-7706-2216

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Lorena Grundy is an ASEE eFellows postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University, where she works with Milo Koretsky to study chemical engineering education. She received her BSE from Princeton in 2017 and PhD from UC Berkeley in 2022, both in chemical engineering.

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Abstract

When enacting active learning pedagogies such as problem-based learning or responsive teaching, instructors require students to make mistakes and admit to and grapple through confusion. Students are often reported to be resistant to active learning, and it is important for instructors to develop epistemic empathy for their students’ affective responses to confusion in the classroom. In this work, I report on two class sessions of a higher-level engineering elective in which I elicited and responded to student confusion in one class session, and then in the next, which I initially described as a “math disaster,” made technical mistakes and became confused myself. Through reflective practice on these experiences with confusion, I developed heightened empathy with students who are uncomfortable making mistakes in class, learned to use my own mistakes to model engineering practices, and re-framed my perspective on what it means to be a “good” engineering instructor. This work illustrates the benefits of incorporating reflective practice into the professional development of engineering instructors.

Grundy, L. S. (2024, June), Reflections on a “Math Disaster”: the Role of Instructor Confusion in the Classroom Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47931

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