CEP 800 Podcast Assignment

I was not quite sure what to expect from the students that I chose for my podcast. I wanted to understand how students perceive learning mathematics and how their conceptual understanding of the learning process aligned with the material that I h ave been reading for my graduate course. I did not want to lead my students in their thinking;therefore, I did not provide them with questions that guided them in one particular direction. Each interview lasted approximately ten minutes, but I realized that I should have had more recorded during the editing phase. I am passionate about film-making and I should have realized that I needed more coverage.

I found it quite interesting that the younger students focused on mathematics as skill development. They felt that although students were "wired" differently at birth, they could match advantageous genetic make-up by working harder than those students. I believe this line of thinking works well with the behaviorist model by using reinforcement to produce desired effects; the result is the learning of mathematical concepts. The Pre-Calculus student has had more experience with mathematics and felt that math is conceptually complex. He discussed the idea that mathematics is quite abstract and that genetics dictated which types of mathematical concepts would be able to be learned by the individual. Our course readings have discussed the behaviorist model and its inability to account for abstract thinking such as Einstein's. This student's comments regarding the abstract nature of mathematics would accompany the detractors of the behaviorist model of learning.

I figure that the students would understand how they learned, but I was impressed that they had formed arguments for how other students learn as well. I now wonder if there is a correlation that exists between how these students feel people learn and how people succeed in life. The younger students feel that hard work can offset genetic deficiencies, and my Pre-Calculus student initially stated that genetics play an overwhelming factor in the developmental process of a mathematics student. Do they have similar feelings about social class structure and societal/economic mobility? If so, what has led them to have these feelings?