Incorporating partially completed worked examples with scaffolding instructions in a calculus course to facilitate student learning: To what effect?

Abstract

The teaching of calculus in undergraduate courses has its share of curricular and pedagogical challenges. Suggestions on how to teach it well abound. To facilitate the learning of calculus of students enrolled on teacher education programmes, the authors devised an instructional strategy called guided exercise in the form of a series of partially completed worked examples with instructional scaffoldings which the students used alongside the lectures, with assistance from the lecturers when necessary. This paper describes the rationale, design and use of these guided-exercises as an instructional strategy to facilitate and enrich student learning. It reports the students’ perception on the effect the strategy has on their learning. Implications are discussed also.