Feedback from students' tests as a tool in teaching

TL;DR

Analyzing students' test work provides valuable insights into their understanding and misconceptions, which can inform teaching strategies and improve mathematical instruction.

Contribution

The paper offers a rationale for analyzing students' test work, explores explanations for performance, revisits teaching of key concepts, and suggests improvement methods.

Findings

Test analysis reveals students' strengths and misconceptions.

Insights from analysis can guide teaching improvements.

Analyzing written work enhances understanding of student learning.

Abstract

A close look at students' written work on examinations offers a wealth of information about their performance, their knowledge of the subject, their strengths, weaknesses and misconceptions, and their overall level of mathematical skills and abilities. This information can be used to better ascertain how mathematical concepts taught in class were understood by students and to suggest various approaches that could be used to improve teaching. The process of analyzing students' work, although time consuming, can be rewarding and can have positive results for both students and instructors. My aim is fourfold: (a) To give a rationale for analysis of students' work, especially tests (b) to give possible explanations of students' performance; (c) to revisit aspects of teaching some mathematical constructs, such as function and, (d) to provide possible ways of improving the teaching of concepts considered in this paper.