How students make meaning in a reform calculus course

The purpose of this study is to understand how students make meaning out of a reform calculus course called Project CALC (Calculus As a Laboratory Course), and to provide a description and interpretation of these meanings and the process of making meaning. This study was conducted qualitatively within the framework of symbolic interactionism. By the direct examination of the empirical world of students in Project CALC, I constructed a comprehensive and intimate account of how students create meaning for the objects that they act on through interaction in the program.;Two cases were studied, the "self-assured" case and the "hard worker." These cases were selected purposefully for the data they were expected to yield. The study was conducted during the fall semester of 1997 and the results are contextually based. The questions that this study attempted to answer were: (1) Which type of class-related materials does each actor use in understanding calculus? (2) What is the nature of the meaning of objects created through interaction? (3) What is the nature of the interpretive process that actors use to create and modify meaning?;Data was collected through interviews, observations, reflective journals, and course documents. Analysis of the data was conducted with the aid of QSR NUD·IST. The data was open coded, and then data reduction was performed. Major categories that emerged became themes, and the grouped subcategories became properties of those themes. Appendix B and C depicts the coding schemas that were used.;Themes that emerged for the first case included the mathematical self, attitudes and feelings, interactions with course material, and derivative concept image. Themes for the second case included defining self, attitude and feelings, methods of understanding course material, methods of performing tasks, challenges, and derivative concept image.;This study shows that there was great diversity in the interactions that each case used to understand the concepts of differential calculus. Both cases defined meaning differently, based on their definition of self. The nature of the meaning they created through interaction was complex. Moreover, the interpretive processes that they used to create and modify meaning was different.