May 2008, Vol. 39, Issue 3
The Linear Imperative: An Inventory and Conceptual Analysis of Students' Overuse of Linearity
Wim Van Dooren
Dirk De Bock
Dirk Janssens
Lieven Verschaffel
The overreliance on linear methods in students' reasoning and problem solving has been documented and discussed by several scholars in the field. So far, however, there have been no attempts to assemble the evidence and to analyze it in a systematic way. This article provides an overview and a conceptual analysis of students' tendency to use linear methods beyond their applicability range.
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