Abstract
Often, the term “diagnostic assessment” is used lightly. The analysis of the mathematical reasoning within the “black box” of the student’s mind remains a challenging journey of discovery for the educator. It needs to be carefully navigated, not to ascribe invalid motives, driving forces and explanations to the object of study, thereby deriving inappropriate remedial solutions. In this paper, I report on the challenges that National Curriculum (Vocational) Level 2 students at Technical Vocational Education and Training colleges face with regard to factorisation. I focus only on factorisation by grouping and analyse data using Donaldson’s error analysis model, which classifies errors into three types of generic errors, namely executive, structural and arbitrary errors. In my investigation, I discover that some of the challenges that students face include the misapplication of knowledge; lack of basic conceptual understanding disabling the factorising procedure; complex errors within their efforts; and errors due to a lack of precision.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Science, Mathematics and Technology Learning
KEYWORDS
Executive Errors, Structural Errors, Arbitrary Errors, Misconceptions, TVET, Factorisation
