Search for: All records

While a standard calculus course may include some neatly-packaged applications of rate of change or Riemann sums to problems of kinematics, majors from biology and medicine are in urgent need of mathematics taught from a modeling perspective. Yet, the art of modeling is scarce in tertiary mathematics classrooms in part because, much like in schools, many mathematicians may lack (a) the relevant real-world concepts (beyond simple physics and engineering) (b) knowledge of the mathematics from a modeling perspective or (c) confidence to change their classroom practices. To remedy this, we trialed a professional development workshop for faculty to learn to mathematically model biological contexts with dynamical systems. The workshop enacted the field’s recommendations for professional development with teachers. We observed gains in faculty’s self-reported comfort with mathematics and biology concepts and teaching mathematics with a modeling perspective.