Francesca Gregorio

The huge difficulties related to the transition from secondary to tertiary mathematics are documented by several official data. The analysis of these difficulties is a main issue in educational research at undergraduate level. It is of particular interest the case of the students who choose mathematics as a major. In fact, for the most part, they are students considered excellent in mathematics during secondary school, they seem to have the cognitive resources to succeed, but, in many cases, they encounter several difficulties during their university experience. Therefore, it appears particularly in- teresting to study also the affective sources and consequences of these difficulties. With this aim, we developed a qualitative and narrative study focused on students’ reflec- tions about their mathematical difficulties in the university experience.

The tertiary transition between secondary school and University appears to be an insurmountable struggle for many students. This is also the case, surprisingly, in a certain sense, of students enrolled in the Mathematics degree, and therefore students considered "gifted" with respect to mathematics. This case seems particularly interesting from an affective point of view: these students often live failure in mathematics as a tragedy, and-above all-initially they are not able to interpret their failure. For these reasons, it appears crucial to investigate which role is played by emotions in the arise and management of this crisis, and how the students' view of mathematics and their self-perception develop in the tertiary crisis period.

Il fenomeno degli abbandoni universitari prima del completamento degli studi è un problema diffuso e preoccupante nella realtà italiana. Sembra inoltre abbastanza chiaro che la scelta di fare Matematica è una scelta fortemente caratterizzante, che difficilmente si concilia con l’idea di “poca convinzione”. A maggior ragione quanto sopra sembra potersi dire per la scelta di fare Matematica a Pisa, una sede prestigiosa e notoriamente difficile. Questi fatti hanno dato lo spunto per la creazione di questa tesi, che si focalizza sulla realtà pisana a partire dall’Anno Accademico 2009/10 fino al 2013/14. Il lavoro di ricerca alla base di questa tesi è stato suddiviso in più fasi. La prima parte del lavoro di tesi, descritta nel primo capitolo, è stata dedicata alla raccolta e all’analisi quantitativa dei dati. Si è poi provveduto ad un confronto dei dati raccolti per il Corso di Studi in Matematica a Pisa, con i dati nazionali, relativi ai Corsi di Studi in Matematica e non, ricavati att...

Investigating the transition between educational levels is one of the main themes for the future of mathematics education. In particular, the transition from secondary school to STEM degrees is problematic for the widespread students’ difficulties and significant for the implications that it has on students’ futures. Knowing and understanding the past is key to imagine the future of a research field. For this reason, this paper reports a systematic review of the literature on the secondary-tertiary transition in Mathematics Education from 2008 to 2021. We constructed two corpuses: one from the proceedings of three international conferences in mathematics education (PME, ICME, and INDRUM) and the other from peer reviewed research papers and book chapters returned by the databases ERIC and Google Scholar. A clear evolution in perspectives since 2008 emerges from the analysis of the two corpuses: the research focus changed from a purely cognitive to a more holistic one, including socio...

International audienceIn recent times, research interest in mathematical learning disabilities (MLD) hasincreased around the globe, but their definition and diagnosis does not enjoy a clearscientific consensus (Lewis & Fisher, 2016). Research regarding MLD is carried outin different fields, with various theoretical backgrounds and aims (Lewis & Fisher,2016): cognitive sciences, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics education. Weconducted a systematic literature review of the last 10 years of PME and CERMEproceedings. We followed the main lines of the methodology used by Joklitschke, Rott,and Schindler (2018) for our study which is structured in 3 main steps: theidentification of keywords about MLD, the selection of the founded articles followingthese keywords and a synthesis of the main features of these papers. Our researchquestion is: How has the field of mathematics education dealt with MLD these last 10years? According to our literature review, the keywords that identify MLD in matheducation are: disab*, dyscalcul*, disord*, difficult*, inclus*. We used them to searcharticles for our review by focusing on titles, abstracts and keywords in proceedings ofPME and CERME (2009-2018). We obtained 348 articles. After reading the articles,we retained 13 pertinent papers for our review about MLD. Our review shows thatthere is no consensus about the definition of MLD in mathematics education. In fact,the 13 articles can be subdivided into three classes according to the specificities of theparticipants of the experiments evoked in the articles: with diagnosis of MLD (oftenreferred as dyscalculia, 4 articles), with learning disabilities with or withoutcomorbidity (8 articles), with specific difficulties in learning mathematics but withoutdiagnosis of MLD (6 articles). To conclude, it would be interesting to have a betterunderstanding of research questions, definitions, theoretical frameworks and methodsin research about MLD in math educatio

The tertiary transition between secondary school and University appears to be an insurmountable struggle for many students. This is also the case, surprisingly, in a certain sense, of students enrolled in the Mathematics degree, and therefore students considered “gifted” with respect to mathematics. This case seems particularly interesting from an affective point of view: these students often live failure in mathematics as a tragedy, and – above all – initially they are not able to interpret their failure. For these reasons, it appears crucial to investigate which role is played by emotions in the arise and management of this crisis, and how the students’ view of mathematics and their self-perception develop in the tertiary crisis period.

The huge difficulties related to the transition from secondary to tertiary mathematics are documented by several official data. The analysis of these difficulties is a main issue in educational research at undergraduate level. It is of particular interest the case of the students who choose mathematics as a major. In fact, for the most part, they are students considered excellent in mathematics during secondary school, they seem to have the cognitive resources to succeed, but, in many cases, they encounter several difficulties during their university experience. Therefore, it appears particularly interesting to study also the affective sources and consequences of these difficulties. With this aim, we developed a qualitative and narrative study focused on students’ reflections about their mathematical difficulties in the university experience.

Abstract Mathematical learning disabilities or difficulties (MLD) are an increasing source of educational inequalities. This article explores research about MLD in Mathematics Education over the past ten years. The methodology focuses on specific, validated keywords. These keywords are used to identify articles in leading journals in mathematics education. Our work makes several new contributions to the field of mathematics education, notably: a reusable methodology and keywords for a literature review; an exhaustive list of articles about MLD in leading mathematics education journals; a discussion of the definitions and features of MLD used in these articles; and a tool to classify research dealing with MLD (categories that characterize students with MLD). We also highlight some unexplored dimensions regarding MLD in Mathematics Education research.

Tertiary transition in mathematics appears to be an insurmountable struggle for many students, including for high achievers in secondary school. The high dropout rates in many Western Countries represent a big issue from an individual and social point of view. It appears particularly significant to analyse this phenomenon in the context of the degree course in Mathematics, studying students’ cognitive and affective reactions to the (often unexpected and severe) difficulties encountered in the tertiary transition. With this aim, we developed a narrative study in a specific context in Italy— that involves excellent students from secondary school—to investigate how successful and dropout students describe their experience in transition. Implications for the educational practice are discussed.