Toward a Stable Diagnostic Representation of Students' Errors in Algebra

摘要

Diagnoses of students' performance on procedural mathematical tasks need todisplay a certain level of stability and robustness if they are to be used as the basis for remediation, particularly with computer-delivered instruction. The purpose of this study was to compare two diagnostic approaches for describing students' errors in algebra--a bug analysis and a rule-space analysis--with the goal of investigating the relative stability of the diagnoses derived from these approaches. Consistent with the findings of recent studies, a relatively large number of bugs were unstable; stable bugs tended to be infrequent. In contrast, the results of the rule-space analysis yielded relatively more stable diagnoses. The results were discussed in light of their consequences for designing remediation.